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Dessert

Little Plum Cakes

A small cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, flour, raisins, currants, baking soda, milk, and baked until golden.

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 ↓

Little Plum Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and vanilla extract, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the sifted flour, raisins, currants, and dissolved baking soda.

  4. Add milk gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto well-buttered baking tins.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 sugar to give the cake richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sifted flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stiffening the batter with milk. Adding milk gradually lets you judge the texture. A stiff batter holds its shape when dropped from a spoon, so the cakes keep their form instead of spreading and turning flat in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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