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Dessert

Plum Cake

A baked cake made with flour, plums or currants, clarified fat, sugar, egg, milk, baking powder, and optional candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and milk work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 406 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine 1 lb flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Rub 2⅓ oz clarified dripping into the flour until no lumps remain.

  3. Add ½ lb plums or currants (washed and dried) to the flour mixture.

  4. If using, cut 2 oz candied peel into small pieces and add to the bowl with ¼ lb sugar.

  5. Beat 1 egg with 2 tablespoons milk in a separate bowl.

  6. Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients until well combined.

Bake and cool

  1. Grease a tin with dripping and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Once baked, turn the cake out of the tin and let it cool on its side against a plate.

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. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Dripping
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich, and coats the tin to prevent sticking.
Egg
Helps bind the batter and adds structure and moisture as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the cake's surface.

The step that matters

Rub the dripping into the flour until no lumps remain. Coating flour particles with fat limits gluten formation and keeps the crumb tender. Unevenly rubbed fat leaves pockets of dry flour and dense or streaky texture.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, 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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