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Plum Cake

A baked cake made with flour, plums or currants, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking powder, salt, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and milk work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 406 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 lb flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon salt.

  2. Rub 3 oz clarified dripping into the flour until no lumps remain.

  3. Add ½ lb plums or currants (washed and dried) to the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Cut 2 oz candied peel into small pieces and add to the mixture along with ¼ lb sugar.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat 1 egg with 2 tablespoons milk, then stir into the mixture.

  3. Grease a tin with dripping and pour the mixture into it.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Once baked, turn the cake out of the tin and let it cool on its side against a plate.

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. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.
Dripping
Coats the flour to create a short, tender crumb and greases the tin.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Plums or currants
Add moisture and fruit flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Rubbing the dripping into the flour. Rubbing fat into flour until no lumps remain coats the flour particles, which limits gluten formation and gives a short, tender crumb. Leftover lumps of fat or flour can bake into dense or uneven patches.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, 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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