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Dessert

Connecticut Election Cake

A yeasted cake with raisins, spices, and citrus, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Connecticut Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Work the shortening into the flour until very fine, with no lumps.

  2. Add the brewer's yeast and enough sweet milk to make the dough softer than biscuit.

  3. Knead the dough for a long time until it begins to rise.

  4. Let the dough stand until it cracks open.

Add the fruit and spices

  1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar and eggs, and mix well.

  2. Soak the raisins in sweet cider for a few minutes.

  3. Add the soaked raisins, mace, nutmeg, orange rind, and citron (if using) to the dough.

  4. Let the mixture stand in a warm place until it rises again.

Bake

  1. Bake the cake until done.

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. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Biscuit + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with fat and liquid.
Shortening
Coats the flour and tenderizes the crumb, adding richness and fat.
Brewer's yeast
Causes the dough to rise, giving the cake its light, airy texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture to the batter.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Knead the dough until it begins to rise. Kneading develops gluten so the dough can trap the gas produced by the yeast; under-kneading leaves a dense, poorly risen cake.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

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