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Cherry Cake

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

Cherry Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Prepare all ingredients before making the cake.

  2. Stone the raisins and chop them roughly.

  3. Sift the flour through a fine sieve.

  4. Clean the currants and sultanas, and chop the cherries and peel.

  5. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  6. Add two eggs and beat well.

  7. Incorporate a handful of flour and beat again.

  8. Continue adding eggs and flour until used up.

  9. Mix in the remaining flour with the fruits and almonds, beating well.

  10. Add the baking powder and mix thoroughly.

  11. Butter and line a cake tin with well-buttered paper, dust with equal parts of flour and sugar.

  12. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.

  13. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for three to four hours.

  14. Turn the cake out onto a rack to cool.

  15. Once cool, brush the top with slightly beaten egg white.

  16. Spread a layer of almond paste on top and sides, and let it set.

  17. Spread a thin coating of royal icing over the set almond paste and let it dry.

  18. Decorate the cake with colored icings in fancy designs.

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, sugar, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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