Skip to main content
Dessert

A Common Cuke

A simple cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and raisin wine, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

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

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and milk, then beat well.

  3. Stir in the raisin wine.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  2. Flour + raisintop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,480 recipes

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

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Raisin wine
Adds fruity flavour and a little extra moisture to the batter.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Appleabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

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

You might also like

Illustration of White CakeIllustrationWhite Cake431 recipesIllustration of Pound CakeIllustrationPound Cake373 recipesIllustration of Orange Bundt CakeIllustrationOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesIllustration of Spice CakeIllustrationSpice Cake344 recipes