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Dessert

Christmas Cake

A sweet almond cake baked with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Christmas Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a cake tin with well-buttered paper.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  3. Add the eggs and milk to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Mix the cream of tartar into the flour.

  5. Combine the dry mixture with the wet ingredients.

  6. Stir in the blanched almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared tin.

  2. Bake 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as the batter bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the batter a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a creamy, aerated batter when beaten with butter.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help bind the batter as it sets.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lightens the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Beating creates tiny air pockets in the fat that expand in the oven, so the cake rises and turns out light. Under-beaten butter and sugar give a dense, heavy cake.

“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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