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Dessert

Passion Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, and passion fruit pulp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Passion Fruit 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.

Prepare the passion fruit

  1. Open the passion fruits and rub the pulp through a sieve with a little sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat the eggs well, separating the whites and yolks, and add them to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the passion fruit pulp.

  4. Mix the baking powder with the flour and fold it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two well-buttered sandwich tins.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, helping the batter set into a firm, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps build a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Passion fruit
Adds moisture and its tart, aromatic flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the baking powder and flour. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten and toughens the cake. Fold gently until just combined so the baking powder's rising power is kept and the crumb stays tender.

Swap the passion fruit

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Passion fruitthe original

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