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Dessert

Loaf Cake

A yeast‑leavened loaf cake with sugar, butter, cinnamon, currant jelly, nutmeg, citron, raisins, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Loaf Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Stir 2 quarts of flour into 1 pint of slightly warmed milk and 1 small teacup of yeast.

  2. Place the mixture near the fire to rise quickly.

  3. Once light, work in 4 beaten eggs, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, ⅓ cup of currant jelly, 1 grated nutmeg, and some chipped citron.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together 1 pound of sugar and ¾ pound of softened butter until white.

  2. Combine this with the flour mixture and add another quart of sifted flour.

  3. Beat the entire mixture by hand for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Let it rise again.

Bake

  1. Fold in 1½ pounds of raisins just before placing the batter into the pans.

  2. Pour the batter into buttered cake pans.

  3. Let them stand for 15 to 20 minutes before baking.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter's structure once it is mixed and risen.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the batter together.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creams with sugar to trap air.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps creaming trap air for a lighter crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy pockets throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Beat the entire mixture by hand for 10 to 15 minutes. Long beating develops the gluten in the flour, giving the loaf a stronger structure and a more even, open crumb.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, butter. 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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