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Dessert

Election Cake

A yeast-based cake with raisins, spices, and brandy, sweetened with sugar and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Election 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. Combine 3 cups of milk, 2 cups of sugar, and 1 cup of yeast in a large bowl to form a batter.

  2. Cover and let the batter stand overnight.

Mix and bake

  1. In the morning, add 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of butter, 3 eggs, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, and brandy to the batter.

  2. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in 1 tablespoon of milk and add it to the mixture.

  3. Grease your baking pans.

  4. Pour the batter into the pans, allowing it to rise until light.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight so it rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the crumb as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pieces throughout the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic batter to add lift and help browning.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the pans and let it rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas that makes the batter airy. Stopping the rise too early leaves a dense cake, while letting it over-proof can cause it to collapse in the oven.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, brandy. 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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