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Dessert

Preserve Cake

A puff pastry cake filled with plum or damson jam and brushed with beaten egg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and egg work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 794 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Preserve Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Assemble

  1. Roll out ½ pound of puff pastry very thin.

  2. Lay the pastry in a greased cake tin.

  3. Spread plum or damson jam over the pastry.

  4. Roll out another ½ pound of puff pastry.

  5. Slit the pastry with a wheel cutter.

  6. Lay the slit pastry on top of the jam.

  7. Turn over the edges of the pastry.

  8. Press the edges all around.

  9. Brush the top with beaten egg.

Bake

  1. Bake for 10 or more minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Plum + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Its layers of butter and dough puff up in the oven, forming a flaky, crisp structure.
Plum or damson jam
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and its moisture softens the pastry layer it touches.
Beaten egg
Brushed on top, it promotes browning and gives the surface a glossy finish.

“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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