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Dessert

Rizine Plain Cake

A cake made with dried fruit (rizine), currants, butter, sugar, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Rizine Plain Cake

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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the rizine in the milk.

  2. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a bowl.

  3. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients.

  4. Wash and dry the currants.

  5. Finely slice the candied peel.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the soaked rizine and milk with the beaten egg.

  2. Combine the wet mixture with the dry mixture.

Bake

  1. Butter a cake tin.

  2. Pour the batter into the tin.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the cake its structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and softens the dried ingredients.

The step that matters

Combine the wet mixture with the dry mixture. Stir only until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense rather than tender.

Swap the currant

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

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

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