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Dessert

Bread Cake

A sweet cake made from light dough, butter, lard, eggs, sugar, milk, baking soda, spices, raisins, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

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

  1. Combine the light dough, butter, lard, eggs, sugar, milk, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, and citron in a large bowl. Mix until well combined.

  2. If the mixture is not stiff enough, gradually add flour until desired consistency is reached.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Light dough
Provides the bulk and yeasted structure that gives the cake its bread-like crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give structure.
Butter and lard
Add fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas for lift.

The step that matters

Adding flour only as needed. Flour absorbs liquid and firms the batter, so adding too much makes the cake dense and dry. Adding it gradually and checking the consistency keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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