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Dessert

Loaf Cake

A sweet loaf cake made with molasses, butter, eggs, flour, currants, sugar, baking soda, vinegar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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.

Make the batter

  1. Warm the molasses and mix in the butter until melted.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool, then stir in the eggs.

  3. Add the flour, chopped currants or cherries, and sugar, mixing well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of vinegar and add to the mixture.

  5. Flavor with your choice of extract or spice.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake 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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour 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

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the vinegar and molasses acid to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Currants or dried cherries
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in vinegar before adding it. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Dissolving it in vinegar first spreads the reaction evenly through the batter so the loaf rises without pockets of soda or a bitter taste.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, egg, flour, sugar, vinegar. 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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