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Dessert

A Good Pound Plum-Cake

A pound cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, currants, candied orange and lemon, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Good Pound Plum-Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually beat in the sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the egg whites, beaten to stiff peaks, and the yolks, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the grated nutmeg and ground cinnamon.

  5. Slowly mix in the flour, currants, and candied fruits.

  6. If desired, add the brandy and mix until smooth.

  7. Beat the batter for 30 to 45 minutes to aerate.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a hoop lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 3 hours.

  3. Ice if desired before serving.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy structure to the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping the crumb stay tender and moist.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with the butter.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the batter for 30 to 45 minutes to aerate. Long beating incorporates air that acts as a leavening agent in this unleavened batter. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the air must be kept in by gentle folding once the flour is added.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, flour, orange. 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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