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Dessert

Dough Cake

A sweet cake made from bread dough, cinnamon, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, raisins, eggs, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Dough 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. Dissolve the baking soda in the cold water and add it to the bread dough.

  2. Thoroughly mix in the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, raisins, and eggs, mixing until smooth.

Rise and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture into two well-buttered tins.

  2. Allow the cake to rise in the tins until light.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Light bread dough
Provides the yeasted base that gives the cake its light, airy rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the dough to produce gas, adding lift and a lighter crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the crumb.

The step that matters

Allowing the cake to rise until light. Yeast-leavened dough needs enough time to build gas and expand before baking. Rising too briefly leaves a dense cake, while over-proofing can cause it to collapse in the oven.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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