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Baking

Chicago Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, sour milk, eggs, flour, currants, raisins, molasses, spices, jelly, and frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Chicago 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 batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sour milk and eggs, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Divide the batter into three parts.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour two parts into long pie tins and bake until golden.

  2. To the third part, add currants, raisins, molasses, and spices.

  3. Mix well and pour into a separate tin to bake.

  4. Once all layers are baked, spread jelly between the layers and frost the top.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that creams with sugar to trap air and give a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creams with butter for lightness and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the leavening.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and cream of tartar to produce rising.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until smooth limits gluten development, keeping the layers tender rather than tough, while the leavening acts quickly once wet.

Swap the currant

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

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

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