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Dessert

Water-melon Cake

A two-part cake made with white and red sugar mixtures, butter, flour, milk, egg whites, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Water-melon 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 batters

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 2 cups of white sugar and 1 cup of butter. Add 1 cup of sweet milk and mix well.

  3. Gradually add 3 ½ cups of flour, 8 egg whites, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. Mix until smooth.

  4. In another bowl, combine 1 cup of red sugar, ½ cup of butter, 2 cups of flour, ⅓ cup of sweet milk, and 4 egg whites. Mix well and fold in 1 cup of raisins.

Bake and serve

  1. In a tube pan, pour the red mixture around the tube and the white mixture around the edge.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg whites
Whipped structure that helps the cake rise and set into a light crumb.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing the egg whites and supporting a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the red batter.

The step that matters

Pouring the two batters into the tube pan. The red and white batters are different densities and colors, so pouring them carefully keeps the layers separate and the pattern intact as the cake bakes.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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