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Dessert

Bread or Raised Cake

A sweet raisin cake made with raised dough, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, 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.

Mix the batter

  1. Combine raised dough, creamed butter, and sugar in a large bowl.

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

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  4. Beat the mixture hard for several minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered pans.

  2. Let it rise for 30 minutes before baking.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add moisture and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture hard for several minutes. Vigorous beating incorporates air and distributes the leavening evenly, which helps the cake rise. Overbeating a dough-based batter can develop too much gluten and make the crumb tough.

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.

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