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Dolly Varden Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Dolly Varden Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks, flour, and sweet milk; beat well.

  3. Fold in the egg whites and baking powder.

  4. Divide the batter; to half, add the raisins and mixed spices.

  5. Pour the batter into cake pans to make two cakes with raisins and two plain.

  6. Boil the sugar until it candies.

  7. Pour the hot sugar over the beaten egg whites and flavor with vanilla.

  8. Spread the mixture between the cakes and ice the top layer.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, milk, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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