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Dessert

Family Cake

A fruit cake made with dripping or lard, flour, sugar, currants, raisins, lemon rind, nutmeg, and tartaric acid.

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 ↓

Family Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Rub the dripping or lard into the flour until well combined.

  3. Add the moist sugar, currants, chopped raisins, carbonate of soda, lemon rind, nutmeg, and tartaric acid.

Make and bake

  1. Mix all ingredients with the milk or milk and water until a dough forms.

  2. Knead to a firm consistency, then roll out to 1 inch thick and cut into shapes.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour and serve buttered and hot.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dripping or lard
Rubbed into flour to add fat, giving the cake a tender, crumbly texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the tartaric acid and liquid to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Tartaric acid
Acid that reacts with the carbonate of soda to produce lift in the dough.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the carbonate of soda and tartaric acid. These two leavening agents react as soon as they meet liquid, so the dough should be mixed and shaped promptly and put into the oven without long delay. Waiting lets the gas escape before baking, which reduces rise.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, raisin, lemon, nutmeg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, lemon, nutmeg, milk. 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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