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Dessert

A Good Light Luncheon-cake and Brown Brack

A light cake made with butter, flour, sugar, yeast, milk, eggs, candied citron, currants, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Good Light Luncheon-cake and Brown Brack

Ingredients

Directions

Make the leaven

  1. Break down four ounces of butter into a couple of pounds of flour, working it into crumbs lightly.

  2. Mix in a pinch of salt and four ounces of pounded sugar.

  3. Hollow the centre, stir in a large tablespoonful of solid well-washed yeast (or an ounce of German yeast), diluted with three-quarters of a pint of warm new milk.

  4. When sufficient surrounding flour is mixed to form a thick batter, strew more flour on top, lay a folded cloth over the pan, and let it remain until the leaven becomes very light (about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half).

Make the batter

  1. When the leaven is at proper height, add a couple of well-whisked eggs, sufficient nearly-boiling milk to warm them, and mix them with the other ingredients.

  2. Beat well into the cake by degrees, adding eight ounces more of pounded sugar and half a grated nutmeg.

  3. Cut from two to three ounces of candied citron thin, and strew over the batter.

  4. Leave again to rise as before for about three-quarters of an hour.

Bake

  1. Mix the citron equally with the batter, put it into a thickly buttered tin or earthen pan, and bake it in a quick oven for an hour and ten minutes at least, and after it is placed in it let it not be moved until it is quite set.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

829Calories
22 gProtein
22 gFat
137 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Seednot 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 bulk and structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the leaven and batter rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour.
Eggs (in the method)
Add structure and richness and help the cake set when baked.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Currants
Add fruitiness and sweetness scattered through the crumb.

The step that matters

Leave the leaven to rise fully before adding the eggs and milk. Yeast needs time to build gas and a light structure; adding the eggs too early gives a dense cake. Once baked, the cake must not be moved until set, because the rising structure is fragile and jarring it can collapse the crumb.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk, nutmeg. 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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