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Bread and Raisin Cake

A yeast‑leavened bread cake with raisins, sugar, butter, and spices.

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

Bread and Raisin 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. In a bowl, mix the flour, water, salt, sugar, and softened butter.

  2. Grate in the nutmeg or add cinnamon or allspice.

  3. Stir in the raisins or dried fruit.

  4. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Stir thoroughly to form a stiff batter, avoiding too much water.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the batter rise for about 3 hours.

  2. Bake for about 3 hours at 350°F (175°C).

  3. For a tender cake, place it on the upper shelf of the oven with a pan of warm water underneath and lower the flame to the lowest point for several 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.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

White flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as its proteins develop with stirring.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, leavening the batter so it becomes light.
Softened butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the crust.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Stir to a stiff batter with little water. Too much water thins the batter, so the dough cannot hold the gas produced by the yeast and the crumb turns heavy and wet. A stiff batter keeps structure during the rise and bake.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, raisin. 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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