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Dessert

English Walnut Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, walnuts, spices, and vanilla, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Walnut Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

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

  3. Add the lightly beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Sift the baking powder and flour together, then gradually add them to the mixture along with the cold water.

  5. Stir in the chopped walnuts, spices, and vanilla extract.

  6. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 45 minutes.

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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and the whipped whites add lift to the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, causing the cake to rise.
Walnuts
Add texture and a nutty flavour to the crumb.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Those bubbles provide lift, so overmixing will deflate the batter and leave the cake dense.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon. 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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