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Dessert

Plum Cake

A yeast-leavened plum cake with currants, raisins, spices, lemon peel, butter, cream, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix flour and sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Add currants, raisins, mace, cloves, nutmeg, and lemon peel; stir well.

  3. Melt butter in cream until warm, not hot.

  4. Beat egg whites and yolks separately, then combine with yeast.

  5. Add melted butter and cream mixture to the dry ingredients; mix thoroughly for 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Butter your pans and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites and yolks add structure and richness to the batter as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas that lifts the batter so the cake rises.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Mix thoroughly for 1 hour. Long mixing develops gluten in the flour and distributes the yeast evenly, so the batter rises well. Overmixing can make the cake tough, so stop once the batter is smooth and evenly combined.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, raisin, mace, clove, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, mace, clove, nutmeg, lemon. 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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