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Dessert

Tea Cake

A sweet cake made with eggs, sugar, milk, flour, spices, and raisins.

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

Tea 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 batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the sweet milk, baking soda, and shortening, and mix until smooth.

  4. Gradually add the flour, allspice, lemon extract, and vanilla extract, mixing well.

  5. Fold in the raisins last and beat the mixture thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let the cake cool before serving.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Beaten with sugar to add structure and help bind the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a soft texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Raisins
Add pockets of chewy sweetness distributed through the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing in the raisins. Folding the raisins in gently and then beating the batter thoroughly matters because overmixing after flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough, while the raisins need even distribution to avoid sinking to the bottom.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, flour, lemon, vanilla, 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.

More tea cake recipes

English 7Blueberry 5Boston 3German 3Johnson 3Lemon 3 See all 116 →

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