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Dessert

Connecticut Election Cake

A yeast-leavened cake with butter, lard, raisins, citron, spices, and brandy, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Connecticut Election 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix 2 quarts of sifted flour with ½ quart of sugar and ½ pint of butter.

  2. Add ½ pint of yeast and gradually mix in 1 pint of warm milk until the consistency is like biscuit dough.

  3. Cover and let it rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. In the morning, add the remaining butter, sugar, and eggs, then let it rise again.

  2. Fold in the raisins, citron, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda.

  3. Pour the batter into greased tins and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rich batter together.
Yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, leavening the dough and giving it a light crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cake set firmly as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, enriching the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust during baking.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast, forming the dough and adding moisture.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. Yeast needs time and warmth to build gas and structure. Letting the dough rise fully before adding the rest of the ingredients gives the cake its light texture.

“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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