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Dessert

Birthday Cake

A raisin and citron cake baked with butter, sugar, eggs, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Birthday 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. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sour milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold into the batter.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks, floured raisins, chopped citron, vanilla, lemon extract, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add flour until the batter is quite stiff.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

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
Whites trapped as foam give lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Butter
Fat creamed with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sour milk
Moisture for the batter, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Flour
Builds the structure that sets as the cake bakes, holding the raisins and crumb together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that leavens the batter. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out that air, so the cake rises less and turns out denser.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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