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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, raisins, hickory nuts, and a boiled raisin‑nut filling.

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

Minnehaha 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 cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the granulated sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the raisins, chopped hickory nuts, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with water and boil until thick enough to spread.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake is cool, spread the filling on top.

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
Beaten whites trap air in the batter, giving the cake lift and a light crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Raisins
Sweet, chewy fruit that thickens with sugar in the filling.

The step that matters

Cover with water and boil until thick enough to spread. Boiling the raisins, nuts and sugar with water dissolves the sugar and cooks the filling down, which thickens it as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it runny and it will not hold on the cake; boiling too long makes it stiff and hard to spread.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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