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Dessert

A Nice Useful Cake

A cake made with butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, milk, currants, candied peel, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Nice Useful Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Wash, pick, and dry the currants.

  3. Whisk the eggs.

  4. Blanch and chop the almonds, and cut the peel into neat slices.

  5. Mix the dry ingredients together.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the butter, milk, and eggs, and beat the mixture well for a few minutes.

  2. Put the cake into a buttered mould or tin, and bake it for rather more than 1-1/2 hours.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

227Calories
14 gProtein
13 gFat
13 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78

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

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and contribute moisture and richness to the cake.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes evenly.

“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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