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Dessert

Canada War Cake

A spiced raisin cake made with brown sugar, lard, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Canada War Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the brown sugar, hot water, and lard together for five minutes.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

  3. Add the flour, spices, and baking soda dissolved in hot water.

  4. Stir in the floured raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two loaf pans.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the cake its dark color.
Lard
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Reindeer flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the cake its structure.
Baking soda
Helps the batter rise as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy pieces of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Cinnamon and ground cloves
Add warm aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Cool the boiled mixture before adding the flour and baking soda. Baking soda reacts as soon as it meets liquid, and adding it to a very hot mixture can make the batter foam up unevenly. Letting the mixture cool first gives a more controlled, even batter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rose, raisin, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rose, raisin, cinnamon, flour. 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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