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Dessert

Watermelon Cake

A cake made with separate white and red batters, folded with raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Watermelon 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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batters

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. In another bowl, cream together 1 cup of butter and 2 cups of granulated sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add ⅔ cup of milk, 3 cups of flour, and 2 teaspoons of baking powder to the butter mixture and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining egg whites, 1 cup of red sugar, ½ cup of butter, ⅓ cup of milk, and 2 cups of flour.

  5. Fold in the raisins that have been rolled in flour.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease your cake pans and pour the white batter around the edges, reserving the center for the red batter.

  2. Pour the red batter into the center of the white batter in the pans.

  3. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts and lightens the crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Granulated sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps it brown.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set into the cake's structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Pouring the two batters into the pans. Pour gently so the red batter settles into the centre without mixing into the white. Stirring or heavy pouring blends the layers, and extra mixing develops gluten, which makes the crumb tougher.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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