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Dessert

Watermelon Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

Prepare the batters

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup of butter and 2 cups of sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add 1 cup of milk, 3 ½ cups of flour, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of lemon extract, and the 8 egg whites. Mix until smooth.

  4. In another bowl, combine 1 cup of red sugar, ½ cup of butter, ⅓ cup of milk, 2 cups of flour, and 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Stir in 1 cup of raisins.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a tube pan and pour the red batter in the center, then pour the white batter around it. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  2. Let cool and ice as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Egg whites add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creaming butter with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
All-purpose flour
Flour forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown and stay moist.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Layering the red and white batters in the tube pan. Pouring the red batter first into the center keeps the two colors separate; pouring too roughly can mix them, blurring the watermelon pattern.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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