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Dessert

Very Good Common Plum-cakes

A yeast-leavened cake made with butter, flour, sugar, currants, pimento, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Very Good Common Plum-cakes

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 dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the butter, flour, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the currants and ground pimento, mixing thoroughly.

  3. In a separate bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm milk.

  4. Combine the yeast mixture with the flour mixture to form a light dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into twelve equal portions and shape into cakes.

  2. Place the cakes on a floured baking sheet and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cakes their structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives it a lighter texture.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough can form and develop gluten, and adds richness.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Dissolving the yeast in the warm milk. Yeast is a living organism. Milk that is too hot can kill it, and then the dough will not rise. Milk that is only warm lets the yeast become active before it is mixed into the flour.

Swap the currant

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

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

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