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Dessert

Pecan Cake

A baked cake made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, mace, pecans, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pecan 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 ↓

Pecan Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Add the eggs and mix well. Stir in the sweet milk.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and powdered mace.

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

  5. Line a cake pan with well-buttered paper.

Layer and bake

  1. Pour a thin layer of batter into the pan.

  2. Add a layer of raisins and a handful of chopped pecans.

  3. Repeat the layers until the pan is two-thirds full.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the creamed batter hold air.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Layering the batter, raisins and pecans. Layers that are too thick or unevenly spread can bake unevenly and sink or stay raw in the middle. Keep each layer thin and fill the pan only to two-thirds so the cake has room to rise.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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