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For Soft Cake Machine

A recipe for a soft cake made with powdered sugar, butter, salt, eggs, ammonia, soda, condensed milk, lemon oil, mace, molasses, lard, flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Braun, Emil · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 46 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and condensed milk work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

For Soft Cake Machine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix 36 pounds of honey, six pounds of molasses, six pounds of granulated sugar, four pounds of lard, five ounces of soda, fourteen ounces of ammonia, five quarts of water, three ounces of salt, one quart of eggs (two ounces of cinnamon and four ounces of allspice can be added), about sixty pounds of flour.

  2. Drop with hand or by soft cake machine.

  3. Bake medium warm.

  4. Mix well together twenty pounds of A sugar, seven and one-half pounds of lard, one-half pound of salt, two gallons of sour milk, three quarts of water, three-fourths of an ounce of lemon oil, one-half pound of soda, ninety to ninety-five pounds of snowflake flour.

Make the icing

  1. Soak eight ounces of gelatin in two quarts of water, then heat to dissolve it; put all in beating machine with ten pounds of powdered XXXX sugar; one to two pounds glucose can be added if not wanted quite so short. When half beaten add one-half ounce of cream of tartar. Beat as fast as possible, and stop beating as soon as stiff or light enough. Flavor with vanilla or honeysuckle.

  2. Soak and dissolve one and a half pounds of gelatin in five quarts of hot water. Put in mixer with twenty-two pounds of XX vv sugar, eight pounds of glucose, and when partly beaten one ounce vi cream of tartar. Vanilla or honeysuckle flavor. Beat fast until light.

Finish and bake

  1. Dip some in currants, some in nonpareil sugar, some in coarse sugar, some in coconut, etc.

  2. Use Graham wafers.

  3. Mix all well and break smooth.

  4. They can be rolled out by hand, also pricked well before baking.

  5. Bake on tins dusted with flour.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1412Calories
37 gProtein
66 gFat
172 gCarbs

Counts 15 of 17 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 15 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Sour Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Lard1 tbsp (12.8g)115
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Honey1 tbsp (21g)64
Molasses1 tbsp (20g)58
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Allspice1 tsp ground (1.9g)5
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Braun, Emil. 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. See the original page.

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. Sugar + condensed milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as the batter sets in the oven.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness, giving the cake a short, soft crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set when baked.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with soda to help the cake rise and adds tenderness.
Soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness and color, and helps keep the cake soft.

The step that matters

Beat the icing as fast as possible and stop once stiff. Gelatin sets as it cools, and over-beating can collapse the foam or make the icing grainy and dense, so it should be stopped as soon as it is stiff or light.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, condensed milk, lemon, molasses, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, condensed milk, lemon, molasses, flour. 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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