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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A layered cake with raisins, figs, and walnuts, topped with boiled sugar and egg icing.

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 ↓

Minnehaha 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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. Gradually add enough flour to thicken the batter, then mix in the baking powder.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the icing and assemble

  1. For the icing, boil the granulated sugar and boiling water until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Beat the 2 eggs in a bowl, then pour the hot sugar mixture over them and beat until cold.

  3. Layer the cake with raisins, figs, and English walnuts.

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. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and creams with sugar to trap air.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Beating the hot sugar syrup into the eggs. The syrup must be added slowly while beating so the eggs cook gently into a smooth, thick icing rather than scrambling. Beating until cold lets it set to a spreadable texture.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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