Name: Nice Plain Cake
Ingredients: 4 cups all-purpose flour; 3 large eggs; 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder; ½ cup good-quality beef dripping; 1 cup moist sugar; 1 cup milk; ¼ lb currants; 1 oz caraway seeds

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nice Plain 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 the batter

In a large bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.
Rub in the beef dripping until well mixed.
Add the sugar, caraway seeds, and currants.
In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk.
Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Bake

Butter a baking tin, pour in the batter, and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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.

Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs: Bind the batter and help set the crumb during baking.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Beef dripping: Rubbed into the flour to add fat, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Moist sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Currants: Add fruity sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

Swap the currant

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, beef, sugar, milk, caraway. 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.