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Dessert

To Make a Pound Cake

A classic pound cake made with butter, flour, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, lemon zest, brandy, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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To Make a Pound Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Make a Pound 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift the flour and let it cool.

  3. Line a baking tin with buttered parchment paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter with your hands for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the eggs, nutmeg, lemon zest, brandy, sugar, and caraway seeds to the butter and mix all ingredients together.

  3. Beat the mixture for another 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the tin and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + carawaytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set, binding the batter into a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and creaming it with sugar traps air that helps the cake rise.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins and starch set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a fine, even texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol evaporates during baking, leaving the flavour behind.

The step that matters

Beating the creamed butter and sugar. Long creaming and beating incorporate air into the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives a fine crumb. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the batter must be mixed gently once the flour is added to avoid toughening it.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, nutmeg, brandy, sugar, caraway):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, nutmeg, brandy, sugar, caraway. 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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