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Dessert

Pound Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, ground rice, raisins, candied orange peel, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pound Cake

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 ↓

Pound 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Mince the orange-peel very finely.

  3. Butter a cake mold and line it with buttered paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a basin, cream the butter with a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, then add the eggs one by one.

  3. Stir in the brandy and vanilla essence.

  4. Mix in the flour and ground rice combined with baking powder.

  5. Fold in the Sultana raisins and candied orange-peel.

  6. Beat the mixture for 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour into the mold and bake for 1.5 hours, testing with a skewer for doneness.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Brandy + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vanilla + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set in the baking batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Candied orange-peel
Adds aromatic citrus flavour and a bright, chewy bite throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter with sugar traps air bubbles that expand in the oven. Properly creamed fat gives a lighter crumb, while under-creaming leaves a dense cake.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, brandy, flour, rice, raisin):

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, brandy, flour, rice, raisin. 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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