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Plum Cakes

A sweet cake made with currants, sugar, citrus peels, eggs, butter, cream, yeast, and sweet wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the currants, powdered sugar, and sliced peels in a large bowl.

  2. Melt the butter in the lukewarm cream.

  3. Combine the melted butter and cream with the ale yeast and sweet wine.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then add to the liquid mixture.

  2. Strain the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped separately, they add structure and lift to the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat in the crumb.
Ale yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, helping the cakes rise and gain a light texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the liquid mixture.
Currants
Provide fruit flavor, moisture, and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolks and whites separately. Whites whipped to a foam trap air that helps the cake rise, while yolks add richness. Folding them in gently keeps that trapped air from collapsing.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, lemon, egg, butter, cream, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon, egg, butter, cream, wine. 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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