Name: French Loaf Cake
Ingredients: 5 cups powdered sugar; 3 cups fresh butter; 2 cups sweet milk; 10 cups dried and sifted flour; 6 eggs; 3 nutmegs, grated; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 pound raisins; ½ pound citron

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 ↓

French 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.

Make the batter

Cream together the powdered sugar and butter.
Add part of the flour and the warm milk along with the beaten egg yolks.
Mix in the remaining flour, beaten egg whites, nutmeg, and baking soda.
Finally, fold in the raisins and citron.

Bake

Pour the batter into loaf pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter: Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs: Yolks enrich the batter while whites add structure and lift when beaten.
Flour: Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking soda: Reacts to lighten the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, even texture when creamed with butter.
Raisins: Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the loaf.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Capersfits less well
Jalapenofits less well

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