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Dessert

Cinnamon Cake

A sweet cake with raisins, cinnamon, and butter, baked at 350°F.

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

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 ↓

Cinnamon 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 the batter

  1. Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl.

  2. Chop the lard with a knife.

  3. Add sugar and mix well.

  4. Beat the egg and pour the beaten egg into the milk.

  5. Gradually add the milk to the mixture in the bowl.

  6. Dredge the raisins with a little flour.

  7. Stir the raisins into the mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Brush the top with melted butter using a pastry brush.

  3. Mix sugar and cinnamon.

  4. Sprinkle the mixture over the buttered top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and short.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown and taste rich.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the top brown during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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