Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓
Sour Milk Cakes
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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Stir in the sour milk, then add the raisins and nuts.
In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and nutmeg.
Make and bake the cake
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.
Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.
Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
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.
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.
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Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,075 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,377 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together490 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps give the cake a light, tender crumb.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
- Sour milk
- Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and keeps it moist.
- Flour
- Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set during baking.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, causing the cake to rise.
The step that matters
Stirring in the dry ingredients. Stirring only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough and dense.
Swap the nuts
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, raisin, flour, nutmeg):
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Pistachiofits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, raisin, flour, nutmeg. 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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