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Dessert

Prune Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, flour, baking powder, prunes, cinnamon, cloves, and iced with cream and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Prune 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. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add to the mixture.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.

  6. Fold in the cooked prunes, cinnamon, and cloves.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. For icing, mix sweet cream with powdered sugar until thick.

  4. Spread the icing on the cake while it is still hot.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 they set during baking.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Adds additional lift as it releases gas during baking.
Cooked prunes
Add moisture, sweetness and a dense, moist crumb to the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon, cream. 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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