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Dessert

Composition Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, baking soda, brandy, raisins, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Composition 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the beaten eggs and grated nutmeg, then mix in half of the flour.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk, strain it, and mix with the brandy.

  4. Stir the milk mixture into the batter along with the remaining flour.

  5. Fold in the raisins just before pouring the batter into the pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and adds richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb while adding richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Sugar
Creams with butter for aeration and adds sweetness and browning.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the batter. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Mixing it fully into the liquid and folding it in promptly keeps the rise even, rather than leaving pockets of soda or letting the leavening lose its lift before baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, milk, egg, brandy, 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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