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Dessert

Afternoon Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, baking powder, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Afternoon 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.

Prepare

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

Make and bake

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, minced raisins, currants, citron, baking powder, and cinnamon until well combined.

  2. Pour the batter into small buttered pans.

  3. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with chocolate.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and contributes to browning.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form the batter.

The step that matters

Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Baking too briefly leaves the centre wet and doughy, while overbaking dries the crumb. The toothpick test shows when the structure has set without over-drying the cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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