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Dessert

Plain Cake

A simple cake made with flour, lard or butter, sugar, raisins, buttermilk, baking soda, eggs, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Plain 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 ↓

Plain 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

  1. Sift the baking soda and flour together.

  2. Stir in the sugar.

  3. Rub in the lard, butter, or drippings with your fingers.

  4. Add the raisins.

  5. Stir in the buttermilk.

Mix and bake

  1. Beat the eggs (yolks and whites together) and add to the mixture.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Lard, butter, or drippings
Coats flour particles to tenderize the crumb and add richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown during baking.
Buttermilk or sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that react with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas that lifts the cake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and buttermilk. Baking soda needs an acid, here the buttermilk, to produce the gas that raises the cake. If the soda is not evenly sifted through the flour, pockets of bitter soda or uneven rising can occur, and the batter should go into the oven promptly once mixed so the gas is not lost.

“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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