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Dessert

To Make Bath-Cakes

A yeast-leavened cake made with butter, flour, caraway seeds, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make Bath-Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Warm the cream and mix it with the barm to create a light paste.

  3. Set the mixture by the fire to rise.

Shape and bake

  1. Incorporate 2 ounces of caraway comfits into the dough and sprinkle the remaining on top.

  2. Shape the dough into round cakes the size of a French roll.

  3. Bake on sheet tins 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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + carawaytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Barm (yeast)
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Warm cream
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the yeast become active.
Caraway comfits
Contribute flavour and a sweet, aromatic crunch.

The step that matters

Set the mixture by the fire to rise. Yeast works best at a gentle warmth; if the dough is too cold it rises slowly, and if too hot the yeast can be killed or the dough can over-proof.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream. 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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