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Dessert

Hartford Election Cake

A fruit cake with raisins, currants, citron, lemon peel, almonds, vanilla, almond extract, sherry, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Hartford Election Cake

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hartford Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks and milk, mixing well.

  4. Combine the raisins, currants, citron, lemon peel, and almonds in a bowl.

  5. Sift half of the flour over the fruit mixture and mix well.

  6. Add the remaining flour and baking powder to the batter, then fold in the fruit mixture.

  7. Stir in the vanilla and almond extracts, sherry, and brandy.

  8. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten its crumb and help it rise.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps give the cake its fine, tender structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake and fruit together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff and folded gently so the air they hold is not lost. Overmixing deflates the batter and produces a denser cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, raisin, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, raisin, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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