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Dessert

Bachelor Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sultanas, currants, sugar, eggs, spices, baking soda, cream of tartar, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bachelor 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

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

  2. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  2. Beat the eggs and buttermilk together, then add to the dry ingredients.

  3. Stir in the sultanas and currants.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 1.5 to 2 hours.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the crumb and add richness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and buttermilk to lift the batter as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that works with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the butter. The butter must be worked into the flour until it resembles coarse crumbs. Evenly distributed fat coats the flour and limits gluten development, which keeps the cake tender rather than tough.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, allspice, cinnamon, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, allspice, cinnamon, pepper. 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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