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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A layered cake with a sweet raisin or hickory nut filling made from sugar, butter, egg whites, flour, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the egg whites (or whole eggs) and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine cream of tartar, flour, baking soda, and sweet milk.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, mixing until just combined.

  6. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil sugar and a little water until it reaches a brittle stage in cold water.

  2. Remove from heat and quickly stir into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Fold in the chopped raisins or hickory nuts.

  4. Spread the filling between the layers and on top of 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 + 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

Egg whites
Whipped into the filling, giving it a light, airy, marshmallow-like structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the layers together.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the beaten egg whites.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lift the layers as they bake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the hot sugar syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and added quickly in a steady stream, as it cooks and sets the whites into a stable, glossy filling. Pouring it in slowly or letting it cool can leave the filling runny or grainy.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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