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Dessert

Good Plum Cake

A moist plum cake with currants, lemon zest, and spices, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Good Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy, similar to making pound cake.

  2. Mix in the flour, cut peels, currants, lemon zest, nutmeg, pudding spice, brandy, and eggs. Add chopped sweet almonds to the mixture.

Bake and cool

  1. Line a cake hoop with paper and butter it, then pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until done.

  3. Remove the hoop but leave the paper on until cooled.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar-free batter base, it traps air and gives the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and crumb together as it bakes.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour while helping keep the cake moist.

The step that matters

Beat the butter until creamy. Beating softened butter traps air that expands in the oven, giving a lighter, more even crumb. Under-beaten butter leaves a dense cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, nutmeg, brandy, egg, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, nutmeg, brandy, egg, almond. 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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