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Dessert

Dough Cake

A sweet cake made with dough, eggs, sugar, currants, optional mixed spice, baked in a greased tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dough Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the dough in a basin.

  2. Wash the currants, dry them with a cloth, and remove any stones.

  3. Add the currants and sugar to the dough.

  4. If desired, add mixed spice.

  5. Break the eggs into the basin.

  6. Beat all ingredients together well.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a tin thoroughly with dripping.

  2. Pour the mixture into the greased tin.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

  4. Turn the cake out of the tin.

  5. Let it cool on its side against a plate.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Dough
Forms the base structure of the cake batter.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Currants
Add fruit pieces that stay moist and sweet within the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until a knife comes out clean. Baking time depends on oven and tin, and pulling the cake too early leaves the centre wet and underset. A knife test shows whether the eggs and starch have set through the middle.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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