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Dessert

French Loaf-cake

A sweet loaf cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, lemon peel, and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

French 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs with the sugar, butter, and milk until well combined.

  2. Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar into the flour, then add to the egg mixture.

  3. Stir in the grated lemon peel and grated coconut.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into round loaf pans and bake until golden brown.

  2. Allow to cool before slicing.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the crumb a tender texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda and stabilizes the batter for rising.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar into the flour. Sifting spreads the leavening evenly so the cake rises uniformly without pockets of soda or bitter spots. Adding it to the flour first keeps it dispersed before the wet ingredients are combined.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream, flour, coconut):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream, flour, coconut. 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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