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Bread Dough Cake

A cake made from a bread sponge, sugar, butter, raisins, egg, spices, and baking soda, baked until light.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Bread Dough Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread sponge, sugar, butter, chopped raisins, egg, cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg, and baking soda.

  2. Stir the mixture until stiff with a spoon.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the batter stand until it becomes light.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and bake for 45 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread sponge
Its fermented starch and yeast give the cake a leavened, slightly tangy flavor and an airy crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness in every bite.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the batter and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand until it becomes light. The sponge and baking soda need time to build gas bubbles that lighten the batter. If the batter is underrisen before baking, the cake will be dense and heavy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, butter, raisin, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, raisin, egg, cinnamon. 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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