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Dessert

Plum Cake

A fruit cake made with butter, flour, currants, raisins, sultanas, mixed peel, brown sugar, eggs, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream with a wooden spoon.

  2. Stir in the beaten yolks and whites of the eggs.

  3. Add the sugar and mix well.

  4. Add the spice, currants (washed and dried), raisins, sultanas, and sliced mixed peel. Stir continuously.

  5. Add the baking powder and milk. Mix everything together.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a cake tin lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 to 2½ 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Its starch sets during baking to form the cake's structure.
Eggs
They bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and lighten.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper caramel flavour.
Currants
Dried fruit that adds chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter. Beating butter with sugar until light traps air bubbles that later expand in the oven. If the butter is too cold or the mixing is rushed, the batter stays dense and the cake rises less evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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