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Dessert

Very Good Common Plum Cakes

A yeast-leavened cake made with butter, flour, sugar, currants, and warm milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Very Good Common Plum Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix the butter with the flour and sugar.

  2. Add the currants and powdered pimento.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk and mix into a light dough with the other ingredients.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into 12 cakes and place on a floured tin.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as its proteins bond with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and lighten.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and activates the yeast.
Currants
Add sweetness, chew and fruity flavour throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. Yeast is alive, and liquid that is too hot can kill it, so the dough will fail to rise. The milk should be warm to the touch, not hot, so the yeast can become active and produce the gas that lightens the dough.

Swap the currant

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

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

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