Skip to main content
Dessert

A Plum-cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with flour, milk, sugar, butter, allspice, and plums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

A Plum-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine the flour, ale yeast, milk, sugar, butter, and allspice in a large bowl.

  2. Mix until a dough forms.

Add the plums

  1. Fold in the plums until evenly distributed.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough as desired and bake.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Allspice + plumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + plumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Ale yeast
Produces gas that leavens the dough so it rises and becomes lighter.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.
Plums
Add juicy fruit moisture and a tart-sweet flavor to the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the plums until evenly distributed. Folding gently spreads the fruit through the dough without overworking it. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which makes the cake tough, while uneven distribution leaves some pieces with too much fruit and others with none.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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

More plum cake recipes

Rich 19Pound 4 See all 152 →

You might also like

Mixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes