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Bread

Railroad Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, sweet cream, nutmeg, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour 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 ↓

Railroad 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the sugar and sweet cream together until well combined.

  2. Add the nutmeg and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the baking powder with the flour.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the cream mixture, stirring until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into shallow tins.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour mixture to the cream mixture, stirring until smooth.. Adding the flour in portions and stopping once smooth keeps the batter even and avoids lumps. Overmixing once flour is in can develop gluten, which makes the cake tough.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Jalapenofits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, flour. 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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