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Dessert

Loaf Cake

A sweet loaf cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, raisins, currants, baking soda, spices, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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

  2. Beat the egg whites.

  3. Beat the yolks.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  5. Toss the raisins and currants in a little flour to prevent them from sinking.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks, milk with baking soda, spices, lemon zest, and flour to the creamed mixture.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Finally add the floured fruit.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as the batter bakes.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whites are folded in to lighten it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a light texture.
Raisins and currants
Add sweetness, chew and moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the loaf its lift. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More loaf cake recipes

Chocolate 35French 25Raisin 19Indian 17Coconut 16Plain 13 See all 114 →

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