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Dessert

Water Melon Cake

A layered cake made from white and red batter with egg whites, flour, sugar, butter, and optional raisins.

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 ↓

Water Melon Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batters

  1. Cream the butter and white sugar together.

  2. Add the water or sweet milk, then the flour.

  3. Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth and fold them in, along with the baking powder.

Layer and bake

  1. In a pan, layer half of the white batter, then all of the red batter mixed with a few seeded raisins, and top with the remaining white batter.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about one hour.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the crumb tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they give the cake structure and lift.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stiff egg white foam traps air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in, so the cake does not turn dense and flat.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour):

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

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