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Baking

Cherry Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, crystallized cherries, almonds, baking powder, milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Prepare a baking tin lined with paper, with edges about 2 inches high.

  3. In a bowl, combine the baking powder with the flour.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs two at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the ground almonds and crystallized cherries.

  4. Mix in the flour mixture and milk until thoroughly combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking tin and bake for about 1 hour.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set in the oven, binding the cake together.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Crystallized cherries
Add sweetness, chew and fruity flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the butter and sugar until creamy. Creaming works air into the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives it a lighter texture. Stopping too early leaves a dense cake, and the eggs added afterward can curdle if the mixture is too cold or they go in too fast.

“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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