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Dessert

Layer Cake

Layer Cake is a spiced raisin and currant cake with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and vanilla, layered with icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Layer 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 ↓

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup sugar and ½ cup butter.

  3. Add ½ cup syrup, ⅔ cup milk, 2 cups flour, 4 egg yolks, 1 cup raisins, 1 cup mixed currants and citron, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ grated nutmeg, and 2 teaspoons baking powder to the mixture. Mix well.

  4. In another bowl, beat 3 egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. In a separate bowl, cream together 1½ cups sugar and ½ cup butter.

  6. Add 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and vanilla extract to the mixture. Mix well.

  7. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into shallow pans and bake until golden.

  2. Stack the layers with boiled icing between each layer and cover the top with icing.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 give the cake a tender, fine-grained crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the batter as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise and become light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter, contributing to its structure and color.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lightens the cake. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, syrup, milk, flour, egg, 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 layer cake recipes

Chocolate 44White 23Fruit 18Orange 16Fig 12Coconut 11 See all 133 →

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