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Dessert

Plum Cake for School Parties, &C.

A cake made with flour, lard, margarine, moist sugar, currants, eggs, and spices, baked in a preheated oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plum Cake for School Parties, &C.

Oven, in the book's wordsA good sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good sharp oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour into a large bowl.

  2. Rub in the lard and margarine until well combined.

  3. Add the moist sugar, currants, spice, and eggs.

  4. Mix into a smooth batter using buttermilk as needed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-papered square bread tins.

  2. Sprinkle a little moist sugar over the top of each cake.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the cake moist.
Cream of tartar
Acts with baking soda to produce carbon dioxide, helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to leaven the batter.
Currants
Add fruit pieces and a chewy texture throughout the cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, sugar, egg, buttermilk. 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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Raisin 6Rich 5Lemon 3 See all 192 →

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