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Dessert

Bread Cake

Bread cake is a sweet loaf made with raisins, currants, spices, butter, and sugar.

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 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.

  1. Mix the butter and sugar into the raised bread dough.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  3. Let the mixture rise until it has doubled in size.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raised bread dough
Provides the yeasted structure that traps gas and gives the cake an airy, bread-like crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer crumb and helps with browning in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crust brown during baking.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of dried-fruit sweetness and moisture throughout the loaf.
Currants
Add small, tart bursts of dried-fruit flavour and extra moisture throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rise until doubled. The dough needs enough time for yeast to produce gas and expand the crumb. Under-proofing leaves a dense result, while the fruit and sugar add weight that can slow the rise.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, raisin, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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 bread cake recipes

Currant 12Diet 12Raisin 12German 5Soda 3Sweet 3 See all 95 →

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