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Dessert

Plain Cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with flour, raisins, almonds, sugar, cinnamon, eggs, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Plain 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 ↓

Plain Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Dissolve the yeast in 1 cup of warm water (100°F in winter, 85°F in summer).

  2. Make a batter with the yeast and water, adding 2 tablespoons of flour, and let it rise in a cool place on the stove.

  3. Prepare the fruit and almonds.

Make and bake the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, fruit, butter (or oil), sugar, cinnamon, and eggs.

  2. Add the yeast mixture and enough lukewarm milk to moisten the dough, which should be fairly firm and wet.

  3. Let the dough rise in a warm place.

  4. Fill greased cake tins with the dough and bake for 1.5 hours.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 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

Yeast
Ferments the batter so the dough rises and becomes light.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the cake together.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough and set during baking.
Butter or oil
Adds fat for tenderness and moisture in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning during baking.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the yeast batter rise before mixing. The yeast must be active and fermenting before it goes into the dough. Water that is too hot can kill yeast, and a cool spot slows the rise, so the starter should be checked before mixing.

“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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