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Dessert

Plum Cake

A sweet baked cake made with flour, sultana raisins, sugar, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Plum 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until smooth.

  2. Add 2 eggs and beat for 5 minutes.

  3. Repeat until all 12 eggs are added.

  4. Gradually mix in a handful of flour.

  5. Add the remaining flour and raisins.

Prepare the tin

  1. Butter the cake tin.

  2. Line the bottom with strong paper.

  3. Brush the inside with melted butter.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar and a little flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the tin.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 2 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sultana raisins
Add moisture and pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.
Soft sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps give a light crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time while beating. Adding eggs gradually, with beating between additions, keeps the butter and sugar mixture emulsified. If eggs go in too fast, the batter can curdle or separate, which can make the finished cake coarse and heavy.

“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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