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Dessert

Another Plum-Cake

A yeast-leavened plum cake with currants, raisins, brandy, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar.

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 ↓

Another Plum-Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Warm the flour by placing it before the fire.

  2. Melt the butter in enough milk to mix the cake.

  3. Beat the eggs well and mix with the yeast; strain the mixture.

  4. Add some of the warm milk and melted butter to the egg mixture.

  5. Combine the egg mixture with the flour and mix in the remaining milk and butter until stiff.

  6. Set the mixture before the fire for 1 hour to rise, covered to keep out air.

Add fruit and bake

  1. Once risen, add the currants, raisins, brandy, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar; mix well.

  2. Butter the baking pan and pour in the cake mixture.

  3. Let it rise before the fire until it reaches the top of the pan, then bake in a properly heated oven.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that the dough sets around once baked.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the crumb feel soft.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, lightening the dough before baking.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully before baking. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas and build volume. Baking before the dough has risen to the top of the pan can leave a dense cake, because the gas that lightens the crumb is not yet trapped in the structure.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, egg, raisin, brandy, cinnamon. 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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