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Dessert

To Make a Full Good Plain Cake

A plain cake with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and dried fruit such as sultanas, currants, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Make a Full Good Plain Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dry mix

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and spice.

  3. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

  4. Stir in the sugar, sultanas, currants, and candied peel.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and milk together.

  2. Moisten the dry mixture with the egg and milk mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake thoroughly in the preheated oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Coats flour particles and adds fat for a tender, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and help bind the batter together.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and softens the crumb.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.

The step that matters

Moistening the dry mixture. Stir only until the liquid is evenly combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense rather than light.

Swap the currant

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

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

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