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Dessert

Plum-cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, citrus peel, candied fruit, spices, brandy, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plum-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 until creamy, then mix in the sugar-candy.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites for half an hour.

  3. Mix in the flour, lime peel, candied orange and lemon peels, mace, and nutmeg.

  4. Add the brandy and orange-flower water.

  5. Fold in the currants and raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a hoop or mold.

  2. Bake for 2 hours or more at 350°F (175°C).

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. Lime + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lime + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 the sugar and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Egg yolks and whites
Whipped eggs provide structure and lift, helping the cake rise and set.
Fine flour
Forms the cake's structure once the proteins set in the oven.
Sugar-candy
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a moist, tender texture.
Currants and raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs for half an hour. Long beating traps air in the egg foams, which gives the cake its lift. Under-beaten eggs leave a dense cake, so the foam should be thick and airy before the flour goes in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, lime, orange, lemon. 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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