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Bread

Loaf Cake

A sweet loaf cake made with sugar, butter, bread dough, eggs, raisins, spices, baking soda, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Loaf Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Work the mixture into the bread dough and let it stand for about 1 hour.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, raisins, cinnamon, clove, mace, and dissolved baking soda.

  4. If the dough is not very stiff, add the flour.

Rise and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a round tin and let it rise in a warm place until bubbles form on top, about 1 hour.

  2. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread dough
Provides the yeast-leavened base that gives the cake its light, bready crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and creams with sugar to lighten the texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until bubbles form. The dough needs time in a warm place to build gas and loosen its structure. Rising too little leaves a dense cake, and the bubbles show it is ready to bake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, bread, egg, raisin, 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 loaf cake recipes

Chocolate 35French 25Raisin 19Indian 17Coconut 16Plain 13 See all 114 →

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