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Dessert

A Plm Cake

A fruit cake made with currants, citrus peel, eggs, butter, cream, yeast, wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,632 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the dried currants, sugar, and sliced peels.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs.

  4. Melt the butter in the cream or milk until lukewarm.

Make the batter

  1. Add the ale yeast and sweet wine to the lukewarm mixture, then stir in the beaten eggs.

  2. Strain the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix well.

  3. Add the ground cloves, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking pan and pour the batter into it.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for about 3 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Currant + winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,437 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried currants
Provide the bulk of the fruit, adding chewy texture and natural sweetness to the cake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cake structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing tenderness and a moist crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps with browning during baking.
Ale yeast
Acts as a leavening agent, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Melting the butter into the cream or milk until only lukewarm. If the liquid is too hot, it can scramble the eggs added later and may kill the yeast, so the batter may not rise properly.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, lemon, egg, butter, cream, wine):

  1. Blackberrybetter flavor fit
  2. Raspberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon, egg, butter, cream, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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