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Dessert

A Delicious Cream-cake and Sweet Rusks

A cream cake made with butter, flour, sugar, candied citron, sour cream, eggs, and soda, baked into sweet rusks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Delicious Cream-cake and Sweet Rusks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Crumble five ounces of good butter into a pound of fine flour.

  2. Mix thoroughly with half a pound of sifted sugar, a few grains of salt, and two ounces of candied citron or orange rind sliced thin.

  3. Add more than half a pint of thick and rather sour cream mixed with two well whisked eggs.

  4. Beat thoroughly into the mixture half a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda that has been blended with twice the quantity of sugar and flour and rubbed through a fine sieve.

  5. Ensure the batter is thick enough to be worked with a wooden spoon; lightly beat it before moulding.

Bake and finish

  1. Divide the batter into two cakes, butter the moulds, and fill them two-thirds full.

  2. Bake for about three-quarters of an hour in a moderate oven; the cakes should be firm on the surface.

  3. Bake the cakes in a small iron oven; when one cake is still hot, pull it apart with a couple of forks, then return it to the oven and crisp it with gentle heat until done, producing sweet rusks.

  4. Turn the cakes out of the mould and lay them on their side on a reversed sieve to cool.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

684Calories
19 gProtein
18 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Cakenot 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 Eliza Acton. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Enriches the dough and adds tenderness and rich flavour to the crumb.
Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Sifted sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Sour cream (in the method)
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the soda to lift the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the crumb.
Carbonate of soda (in the method)
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Beating in the soda. Carbonate of soda must be evenly distributed through the batter, or it leaves pockets of bitterness and uneven rising. Sieving and blending it with sugar and flour first helps it disperse.

“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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