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Dessert

Loaf Cake

A sweet loaf cake made with flour, sugar, butter, raisins, wine, brandy, eggs, yeast, spices, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Loaf Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and sugar.

  3. Take half of the mixture and work it into the flour.

  4. Add the yeast and make the dough slightly softer than biscuit dough.

  5. Let the dough rise until well risen.

Mix and rise

  1. Incorporate the remaining butter and sugar, spices, and brandy.

  2. Once light, add the beaten eggs and fruit.

  3. Let the mixture rise in the tins for 1 hour.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Frost if desired; it will keep all winter.

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.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter 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 as the dough sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating the flour and carrying flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming with the butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture to the crumb.
Raisins
Supply sweetness, moisture and chewy fruit pieces throughout the loaf.
Domestic yeast
Leavens the dough so it rises and becomes light before baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until well risen. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and expand the dough; under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the structure must hold the gas as it sets in the oven.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, wine, brandy, egg):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, wine, brandy, egg. 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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Chocolate 35French 25Raisin 19Indian 17Coconut 16Plain 13 See all 114 →

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