Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread or Raised Cake

A raised cake made with dough, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, raisins, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread or Raised Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raised dough with the creamed butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, dissolved baking soda, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and raisins, and mix everything well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  4. Beat the mixture hard for several minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour into buttered pans and let it rise for 30 minutes before baking.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raised dough
Provides the leavened base that gives the cake its risen, airy crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to help hold air and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Releases gas as it reacts and heats, helping the batter rise.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Gentle folding keeps the air in the beaten whites. Stirring hard at this point knocks that air out, which makes the cake denser.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove. 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 raisin cake recipes

Spiced 34Molasses 30Eggless 11Caraway 7Currant 7Filling 7 See all 154 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes