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Dessert

Bread or Raised Cake

A spiced raisin cake made with raised dough, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, raisins, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread or Raised 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 batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raised dough with the creamed butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, dissolved baking soda, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and raisins. Mix everything well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  4. Beat the mixture hard for several minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour into buttered pans and let it rise for 30 minutes.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 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

Raised dough
Provides the yeast-risen base that gives the cake its bread-like crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the crust while baking.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, and help trap air for a lighter texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that give lightness. Folding gently keeps those bubbles intact, while vigorous stirring would deflate them and leave a denser cake.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove. 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 cake recipes

Spiced 34Molasses 30Eggless 11Caraway 7Currant 7Filling 7 See all 154 →

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