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Dessert

A Good Soda Cake

A soda cake made with butter, flour, sugar, milk, eggs, currants, nutmeg, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Good Soda Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Break down half a pound of fresh butter into a pound of fine dry flour, and work it into very small crumbs.

  2. Mix well with half a pound of sifted sugar, and pour in a quarter of a pint of boiling milk, and next, three well-whisked eggs.

  3. Add some grated nutmeg, or fresh lemon rind, and eight ounces of currants, cleaned and dried.

  4. Beat the whole well and lightly together.

  5. Strew in a very small teaspoonful of good carbonate of soda in the finest powder, which has been rubbed through a sieve and well mixed with a little sugar, and again beat the cake well and lightly for three or four minutes.

Bake

  1. Put it into a buttered mould, and bake it from an hour to an hour and a quarter.

  2. Or divide it in two, when three-quarters of an hour will be sufficient for each part.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

805Calories
28 gProtein
16 gFat
137 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 (in the method)
Works into the flour to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Carbonate of soda (in the method)
Reacts with the batter to lift and lighten the cake as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake.
Currants
Add fruit and chewy texture scattered through the crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the carbonate of soda. Soda must be sifted fine and mixed evenly through the batter, then beaten in lightly but briefly. Uneven distribution leaves pockets of bitter, yellow-spotted crumb, and overbeating knocks out the gas that makes the cake rise.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, egg, 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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