Skip to main content
Dessert

Dundee Cake

A Scottish fruit cake made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, raisins, almonds, candied peel, and lemon rind.

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 ↓

Dundee Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add one egg at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Gradually add flour until fully combined, which should take about 20 minutes.

Fruit, pan and bake

  1. Stir in the sultanas, lemon rind, and chopped peel.

  2. Line a cake tin with buttered paper and pour in the mixture.

  3. Slice the blanched almonds and arrange them on top.

  4. Bake for 1.5 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. 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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when beaten with the butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and moisture, softening as the cake bakes.
Almonds
Add a nutty flavour and a crisp texture on the surface.

The step that matters

Add one egg at a time, mixing well after each addition. Eggs are an emulsion. Adding them quickly can break the batter and make it look curdled, which traps less air and can lead to a heavier cake. Mixing each egg in fully keeps the batter smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes