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Dessert

Rich Plum or Bride Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, currants, raisins, almonds, candy peel, citrus rinds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rich Plum or Bride Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter into a cream with the sugar.

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

  3. Whisk the batter for 45 minutes.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour until well combined.

  5. Add the currants, raisins, almonds, candy peel, and grated rinds.

  6. Mix in the brandy until fully incorporated.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake mold, filling it half full.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 to 35 minutes.

  3. Once done, remove from the mold and cool on a wire rack.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed base.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the crumb.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Filling the mold half full. Batter this rich and fruit-heavy rises and expands in the oven, so filling it only halfway leaves room for rising and helps the centre bake through without overflowing or leaving the middle underdone.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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