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Dessert

Sultana Cake

A sweet cake made with sultana raisins, candied peel, lemon zest, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Sultana Cake

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 ↓

Sultana Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 cup of flour.

  2. Rub in ¼ cup of butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

  3. Add ¼ cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and ¾ cup of sultana raisins.

  4. Grate the zest of the lemon into the bowl.

  5. Chop the candied peel and add it to the mixture.

  6. In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of milk with 2 egg yolks.

  7. Stir the milk and egg mixture into the other ingredients until combined.

Add the whites and bake

  1. Grease a cake tin.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.

  3. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Cool

  1. Once baked, turn the cake out onto its side or a sieve to cool before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender, browned crust.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so the cake rises less and turns denser. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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