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Dessert

Prince Albert Cake

A sweet cake with raisins, molasses, and spices, topped with icing.

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 ↓

Prince Albert 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 bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk, flour, and baking powder until combined.

  5. Divide the batter in half and pour one half into shallow tins.

  6. To the remaining batter, add molasses, raisins, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Mix well and pour into the other shallow tin.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes and frost with icing flavored to your taste.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add tenderness and richness.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and become light.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color to the spiced half.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Dividing and pouring the two batters. The plain batter and the spiced batter must be split evenly so both layers bake to the same thickness and rise consistently. Uneven pouring can leave one layer dense or underbaked, and the batter should be mixed well before pouring so the raisins and spices are distributed evenly.

“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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