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Dessert

Plum Cake

A sweet baked cake made with butter, flour, currants, raisins, sultanas, mixed peel, brown sugar, spice, baking powder, eggs, and milk.

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 ↓

Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream with a wooden spoon.

  2. Stir in the beaten yolks and whites of the eggs.

  3. Add the brown sugar and mix well.

  4. Incorporate the spice, currants, raisins, sultanas, and mixed peel, stirring continuously.

  5. Finally, add the baking powder and milk, mixing until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a cake tin lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake for 2 to 2½ 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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
Creamed with the sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown.
Currants
Add fruit sweetness and chew, distributed through the batter.

The step that matters

Baking for the full 2 to 2½ hours. A dense, fruit-heavy batter needs a long, low bake so the centre sets fully before the outside over-browns. Pulling it early can leave a wet, sunken middle.

Swap the currant

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

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

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