Name: Bread Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup raised dough; ½ cup butter; 1 cup sugar; 2 eggs; 2 sticks grated chocolate; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon baking soda; flour (enough to make quite stiff)

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 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.

In a large bowl, combine the raised dough, butter, and sugar until well mixed.
Add the eggs, grated chocolate, nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking soda; mix thoroughly.
Gradually add flour until the mixture is quite stiff.
Pour into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Chocolate + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,808 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Raised dough: Provides the yeast-risen base and bulk that gives the cake its bready body.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Baking soda: Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour: Builds the structure that sets the crumb, and stiffens the mixture to the desired texture.

“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.