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Dessert

Plum Cake

A fruit cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, cherries, walnuts, ginger, sultanas, currants, mixed peel, almonds, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and mix

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a little flour with each egg.

  4. Fold in the cleaned fruit and the remaining flour until well combined. Ensure the mixture has a firm consistency.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 4 to 5 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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated texture when creamed.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Ensure the mixture has a firm consistency. A batter that is too wet can sink or bake unevenly and become gummy, while a firm batter holds the heavy fruit evenly suspended. Adjust with flour or milk before baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, walnut, ginger, 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.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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