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Dessert

Pound Cake

A sweet baked cake with flour, butter, sugar, milk, raisins, currants, almonds, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pound Cake

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 ↓

Pound 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the raisins by stoning and chopping them into small pieces.

  3. Wash, pick, and dry the currants.

  4. Melt the butter until creamy, but do not let it pool.

  5. Blanch and chop the almonds, and grate the nutmeg.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix all prepared ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Stir the baking soda into the warmed milk, then add it to the mixture to form a paste.

  3. Grease a mold and fill it more than halfway with the dough.

  4. Bake the cake for 1 to 2 hours, or less if making two smaller cakes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic components to help the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form the batter into a paste.

The step that matters

Melting the butter. If the butter is melted until it pools rather than staying creamy, the fat separates from the batter and the cake can turn out greasy and dense. Keeping it creamy helps it blend evenly with the other ingredients.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, rice, raisin, butter, almond, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

More pound cake recipes

White 28Coconut 27Ginger 27German 18Citron 17Molasses 17 See all 518 →

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