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Dessert

Sultana Cake

A moist cake made with sultanas, candied peel, milk, baking powder, butter, lard, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sultana Cake

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sultana Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and line a baking tin with paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter, lard, and sugar until smooth.

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

  3. Mix in the sultanas and chopped candied peel.

  4. Add the flour, baking powder, and milk, and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about one hour, depending on the thickness of the cake.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with fat.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter so the cake bakes softly.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs two at a time. Adding eggs gradually and beating well after each addition keeps the emulsion stable. A curdled batter can trap less air and bake up heavier and denser.

“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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