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Dessert

Mrs. Sibley's Raised Cake

A yeast-raised cake made with milk, shortening, eggs, brown sugar, spices, and flour, baked in a loaf pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mrs. Sibley's Raised Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Combine milk, yeast, shortening, eggs, brown sugar, and spices in a large bowl.

  2. Stir in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Cover the bowl and let the mixture rise until doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for 1 hour.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Yeast
Produces gas during rising, leavening the batter so it becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Shortening
Adds fat, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until doubled. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and expand the dough. Under-rising leaves the cake dense, while the rise must be complete before baking sets the structure.

“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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