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Dessert

Pound Cake

A pound cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and dried fruits including raisins, currants, candied peel, sultanas, and dried cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Pound Cake

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 ↓

Pound 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift and dry the flour before measuring.

  3. Pound and sift the sugar.

  4. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs, breaking each egg separately.

  5. Whisk the egg whites until they form a solid froth.

  6. Chop the lemon peel with a little powdered sugar to prevent sticking.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the butter and sugar until creamy, then add the yolks.

  2. Gradually fold in the flour and beaten egg whites.

  3. Add the dried fruits and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Whisked whites add lift and air, while yolks add richness and help bind the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Dried fruits
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air from the whisked whites in the batter. Stirring hard knocks out that air and leaves a denser cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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