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Dessert

Loaf, or Election Cake

A yeast-leavened loaf cake with raisins or citron, sweetened with sugar and flavored with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Loaf, or Election 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 dough

  1. In a bread maker, combine milk, potato yeast, and sugar.

  2. Add flour and mix for 3 minutes.

  3. Cover and let rise until light.

  4. Once risen, add shortening, sugar, egg whites, and nutmeg.

  5. Mix for 5 minutes, cover, and let rise again until light.

Bake

  1. Fill pans with batter and alternate with floured fruit until pans are two-thirds full, adding fruit on top.

  2. Let the cake stand in the pans for 30 minutes before baking in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen batter and sets as it bakes.
Potato yeast
Leavens the dough so it rises light before baking.
Egg whites
Add lift and structure to the batter as it rises and bakes.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens its texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light before shaping. Yeast needs time to produce gas and stretch the gluten network; rising too little leaves a dense cake, while the second rise builds the final lightness that baking then sets.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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