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Dessert

Cold Water Cake

A baked cake made with raisins, currants, lard or butter, hot water, spices, flour, baking soda, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cold Water 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. Combine raisins, currants, lard or butter, hot water, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool.

  4. Stir in the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture to the cake.
Currants
Add small pockets of fruit sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Lard or butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the batter to help it rise and brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the cake lift.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit mixture for 15 minutes. Boiling the fruit in water with fat softens the raisins and currants and dissolves the sugars into the liquid. Letting it cool before adding the flour keeps the leavening active and prevents the batter from overmixing or cooking unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, flour. 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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