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Dessert

Plum-cake Ob Wedding-cake

A dense, spiced plum cake with dried fruits, citrus peel, almonds, and spices, baked at 350°F for 2.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum-cake Ob Wedding-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. In a large bowl, cream the butter with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, flour, salt, and eggs, mixing continuously.

  3. Incorporate the remaining ingredients until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a lined cake tin placed on a sturdy baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 2.5 hours, without increasing the heat.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Flour and butter 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb and fat for flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender while it bakes.
Ground almonds
Add moisture, richness and a nutty flavour that keeps the crumb tender.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and helps the cake keep its moisture.

The step that matters

Bake without increasing the heat. A long, slow bake lets the large cake cook through evenly. Raising the heat sets and browns the outside before the centre is done, leading to a dense or cracked cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, orange, lemon, egg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, orange, lemon, egg, brandy. 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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