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Dessert

Fruit Ginger Cake

A moist cake made with flour, sugar, margarine, raisins, lemon peel, ginger, baking soda, lemon essence, egg, milk, and golden syrup.

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 ↓

Fruit Ginger 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Cut the lemon peel and mix it with the flour, raisins, and ginger.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and margarine together until light.

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it along with the golden syrup to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the lemon essence and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 1.5 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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk and golden syrup to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Margarine
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the cake stay soft.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the milk. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved and mixed in promptly so it reacts evenly throughout the batter. Uneven dissolving can leave pockets that cause patchy rising or a bitter taste.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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