Skip to main content
Dessert

Superior Loaf Cake

A yeast‑leavened loaf cake with raisins, currants, sliced citron, cinnamon, mace, and wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Superior Loaf 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. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sponge

  1. Warm ½ cup of butter with the milk.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of flour and the yeast; let it rise.

Mix and shape

  1. Add the remaining ingredients, including the wine or brandy.

  2. Pour the mixture into well-buttered cake tins and let it rise again.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites help trap air for a lighter crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Homemade yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise before and inside the tins.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rise again in the tins. The yeast's gas gives the cake its lift. If the second rise is too short, the loaf may be dense; if it runs too long, the structure can weaken and collapse in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More raisin loaf cake recipes

Currant 7 See all 19 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes