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Dessert

A Dover Cake

A sweet cake made with milk, pearl-ash, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, brandy, rose-water, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Dover 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. Dissolve the pearl-ash in vinegar.

  2. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  3. Gradually add the spice and liquor to the creamed mixture.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light and stir them into the butter and sugar alternately with the flour.

  2. Gradually add the milk and mix thoroughly.

  3. Butter a large tin pan and pour in the mixture.

Bake and keep

  1. Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Wrap the cake in a thick cloth to keep it moist and fresh for up to two weeks.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Brandy + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together560 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add air and structure to the batter as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, butter adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, sugar sweetens the cake and helps give it a fine texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, softening the crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolve the pearl-ash in vinegar. Pearl-ash is an alkaline leavening agent that reacts with the acid in vinegar to release gas, which lifts the batter. It should be fully dissolved before it is added so it is distributed evenly and the cake rises uniformly.

“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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