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Dessert

Plum Cake

A baked cake made with flour, sugar, eggs, butter, cloves, nutmeg, currants, lemon peel, white wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks gradually, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Sift the flour, cloves, and nutmeg together, then add to the butter mixture.

  5. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  6. Mix in the currants, lemon peel, white wine, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a cake pan lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten stiff and folded in, lighten its crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake its tender, rich texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream the butter to a light base.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake, so fold with a light hand until no streaks remain.

Swap the currant

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

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

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