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Dessert

Sultana Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, lemon zest, almonds, candied peel, and sultana raisins.

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

Sultana 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

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Grate in the lemon zest.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  5. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk and unbeaten eggs.

  6. Beat the mixture thoroughly for 2-3 minutes.

  7. Stir in the raisins, shredded candied peel, and chopped almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a tin lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake for 1¼ hours.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift the cake as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter for an even crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture alternately with the milk and eggs. Adding dry and liquid ingredients in portions keeps the batter smooth and emulsified, so it does not curdle and the flour hydrates evenly for a uniform crumb.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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