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Dessert

Republican Cake

A raisin cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, sour cream, baking soda, raisins, nutmeg, and mace.

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 ↓

Republican 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

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

  2. Prepare and butter the cake tins.

  3. Sift the baking soda into the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light.

  2. Beat the eggs separately, then add them to the butter and sugar mixture gradually.

  3. Mix in the sour cream and dissolved baking soda if using milk.

  4. Gently fold in the flour until just combined.

  5. Dredge the raisins with flour and fold them in last.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly until the cake is evenly heated and cooked through.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed base with the butter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter together.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tanginess, and reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour gently until just combined. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Overmixing toughens the cake, so the flour should be folded in only until no dry streaks remain.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, cream, coffee, 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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