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Dessert

Election Cake

A yeast-based cake flavored with cinnamon, sweetened with sugar and butter, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Set a sponge with 1 pint of milk, ½ cup of yeast, a little salt, and enough flour to make a thick batter.

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Whisk the eggs and add them to the butter and sugar mixture along with the sponge and other ingredients.

  4. Add enough flour to form a dough and knead it.

Rise and bake

  1. Butter your pan, place the dough in it, and let it rise.

  2. When it is light, bake it.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and holds the rise.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the sponge and dough.

The step that matters

When it is light, bake it.. The yeast's gas must be trapped in the gluten network and risen to the right point before baking. Baking too early gives a dense cake, while letting it over-rise can make it collapse in the oven.

“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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