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Dessert

Dutch Cake

A sweet cake made from bread dough, raisins, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Dutch Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the sugar, butter, and beaten egg into the bread dough until thoroughly incorporated.

  2. Flavor the mixture with cinnamon and nutmeg.

  3. Add the raisins.

Rise and bake

  1. Place the mixture into a greased pan and let it rise for an hour or more.

  2. Bake slowly until golden brown.

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

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Provides the yeasted base structure and chewy crumb that the cake is built on.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the enriched dough together.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and promotes browning during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the crumb.
Seeded raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until golden brown. Baking slowly lets the interior cook through before the sugar in the outer crust over-browns and burns. Color is a guide, so watch for even golden tops rather than dark spots.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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