Skip to main content
Dessert

A French Cake

A French cake made with flour, chocolate, raisins, butter, marzipan, almonds, and eggs, baked at 350°F for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A French 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. Make a paste with 2 pounds of sifted flour, 6 teaspoons of pounded chocolate, 12 ounces of stoned raisins, 2 pounds of fresh butter, ⅓ cup of Marasquino, ½ pound of scalded, peeled, and pounded Jordan almonds, and 24 eggs.

  2. Mix this with a sponge made from 2 pounds of sifted flour that has risen well.

Rise and bake

  1. Place the mixture into a hoop and set it in a warm place for 1 hour.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sifted flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter.
Jordan almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the batter.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise well before mixing. The sponge is leavened by yeast-like fermentation, and a well-risen sponge gives the cake its lift. If it has not risen well, the finished cake will be dense.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, chocolate, butter, almond, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, chocolate, butter, almond, egg. 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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes