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To Make Bath Cakes

Bath Cakes are a yeasted bread with caraway seeds baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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To Make Bath Cakes

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 ↓

To Make Bath Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the yeast and enough warm cream to make a light paste.

  3. Set the mixture by the fire to rise.

  4. Once risen, work in half of the caraway confections and sprinkle the rest on top.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into round cakes the size of French rolls.

  2. Bake on sheet pans in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until golden.

  3. Serve hot for breakfast.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + carawaytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour and shortening the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together.
Barm (yeast)
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Caraway comfits
Adds sweetness and a spiced aroma throughout the cakes.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream. 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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