Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.
Make the batter
In a bowl, combine bread dough, sugar, butter, and beaten eggs.
Beat with a heavy wire beater until smooth.
Add grated lemon rind and mix well.
Pour the mixture into a shallow pan.
Bake
When the batter is light, sprinkle the top with granulated sugar, cinnamon, and chopped nuts or fruit, pressing them in gently.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,950 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Cinnamon + nutstop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together487 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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
- Bread dough
- Forms the base of the cake, giving it a yeasty, bread-like crumb.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the crumb.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps the top brown during baking.
The step that matters
Beating until the batter is light. Beating the mixture well traps air, which helps the cake rise and become light before it goes into the oven. If it is under-beaten, the cake will be dense.
Swap the nuts
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, butter, egg, lemon, cinnamon):
- Almondfits better
- Pistachiofits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, egg, lemon, cinnamon. 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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