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Dessert

Plum-cake

A fruit cake made with flour, sugar, currants, raisins, spices, butter, wine, brandy, eggs, yeast, and candied citrus, finished with a sugared icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix flour, sugar, currants, raisins, mace, cloves, Jamaica peppers, nutmeg, lemon peel, and almonds in a large bowl.

  2. Melt butter in cream until lukewarm.

  3. Add sweet wine, brandy, beaten egg whites and yolks, and yeast to the melted butter mixture.

  4. Gradually strain the liquid into the dry ingredients.

  5. Beat the mixture for a full hour.

Bake

  1. Butter a cake pan.

  2. Pour batter into the pan, adding plenty of citron, lemon, and orange candy.

  3. Once the cake is baked, pour the icing over it.

  4. Return the cake to the oven for 15 minutes, keeping the door slightly open to prevent burning.

Make the icing

  1. Mix sifted sugar with a little egg white.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

  3. Gradually add the rest of the sugar and a little orange‑flower water.

  4. Whisk for nearly an hour.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten whites and yolks add structure and lift to the rich batter.
Butter
Melted butter adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as the cake sets.
Yeast
Produces gas that helps the batter rise and become lighter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the crust and form the icing.

The step that matters

Returning the cake to the oven after icing. Sugar icing browns quickly at high heat, so the door is left slightly open to lower the oven temperature and prevent scorching while the cake finishes.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, raisin, mace, clove, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, mace, clove, pepper, nutmeg. 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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