Skip to main content
Dessert

Nut Cake

A layered cake with sweet batter, raisins, molasses, spices, nuts, and a milk-based filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Nut Cake

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 ↓

Nut 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 batters

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, ½ cup sweet milk, 2 cups flour, ½ cup butter, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 3 egg whites until smooth.

  3. In another bowl, combine 1 cup sugar, ½ cup butter, ½ cup sour milk, 2 cups flour, and 3 egg yolks.

  4. Add 1 cup raisins, 1 tablespoon molasses, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, ½ tablespoon cloves, ½ tablespoon nutmeg, and 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in warm water to the second mixture.

  5. Layer the mixtures in a baking dish and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Beat 2 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, and 1 cup nuts together for the filling.

  2. Stir this mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk and cook until thickened.

  3. Beat the filling until cool and spread between the layers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and filling together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, moist crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to help the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and thickens with the egg filling to form a custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into boiling milk. Eggs thicken when heated gently, but added to boiling milk without constant stirring they can scramble into lumps. Stir steadily and cook only until thickened so the filling stays smooth.

“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.

More nut cake recipes

Hickory 164Chocolate 6Cocoa 6Sour Cream 5White 5Macaroons 3 See all 162 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes