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Dessert

Watermelon Cake

A layered cake with white and red batter, containing raisins, baked in a tube pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Watermelon 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 white batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 2 cups white sugar and 1 cup softened butter.

  3. Add 1 cup sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add 3 ½ cups flour and 8 egg whites, mixing until smooth.

Make the red batter

  1. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup red sugar, ½ cup softened butter, and ⅓ cup sweet milk.

  2. Mix in 2 cups flour, 4 egg whites, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, and ½ teaspoon baking soda.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a tube pan and carefully layer the red batter around the tube and the white batter around the edge. It may require two people to fill the pan evenly.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped or beaten, they add lift and a light, tender texture to the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and helps them hold their volume.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Layering the red and white batters in the pan. Batters of different densities poured unevenly can mix or sink, blurring the two-colour pattern. Pouring slowly and in a controlled way keeps the layers separate so the cake bakes with a clean design.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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