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Dessert

Pound Plum-cake

A dense cake made with butter, brown sugar, flour, currants, candied peel, spices, and treacle, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pound Plum-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot 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. Rub butter and brown sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add currants, candied orange peel, candied lemon peel, ground ginger, ground allspice, and caraway seeds.

  3. Mix in the flour until combined.

  4. Make a paste with hot treacle and add it to the mixture.

Bake and glaze

  1. Pour batter into molds and bake until done.

  2. To glaze, dip the top in boiling water and beer.

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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Hot treacle
Adds moisture, dark sweetness and a deeper color to the cake.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Pour batter into molds and bake until done. Baking until fully set matters because a dense, fruit-filled batter can look cooked on the outside while the centre remains wet. Doneness should be checked in the middle, not just the surface.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, orange, lemon, ginger, allspice):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, orange, lemon, ginger, allspice. 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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