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Dessert

Rich Plum Cake, or Wedding Cakh

A dense, buttery plum cake with citrus, nuts, raisins, currants, and spices, baked at 300°F for 4 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Rich Plum Cake, or Wedding Cakh

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the eggs, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the flour gradually until fully combined.

  5. In a separate pot, mix the powdered almonds with sugar and stir constantly over low heat until dry.

  6. Fold in the citron, orange peel, lemon peel, raisins, currants, and mixed spice.

  7. Add the brandy, white wine, and rose water, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-buttered and papered pan.

  2. Sift flour on top before baking.

  3. Bake for 4 hours or until a skewer comes out clean.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Powdered almonds
Add moisture, body and a nutty flavour to the crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Drying the almond and sugar mixture. Stirring constantly over low heat keeps the powdered almonds from scorching while driving off moisture, so the mixture stays dry and blends into the batter without making the cake wet or heavy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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

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