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Dessert

Raisin Pound Cake

A pound cake made with raisins, butter, powdered sugar, eggs, flour, lemon extract, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Raisin Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs one or two at a time, whipping them in with a strong egg whip.

  3. Coat the raisins in flour, shake off the excess, and mix them in thoroughly.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the mixture and mix lightly.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for about two hours.

  2. Ice the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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 to trap air and give a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness, chewy moisture and bursts of fruit throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour and raisins. Flour-coated raisins stay spread through the batter instead of sinking. Mixing the flour in lightly keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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