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Dessert

Election Cake

A loaf cake made with milk, yeast, flour, butter, sugar, and molasses, baked and finished with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 sponge

  1. At noon, make a sponge by mixing the milk, yeast, and 1 cup of flour.

Make the dough

  1. At night, add the butter, sugar, and enough flour to achieve a stiff dough.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the dough in loaves.

  2. While the cake is warm, smear with egg white and molasses, then return to the oven for 1 minute.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, lifting and aerating the dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the dough.

The step that matters

Making the sponge. The yeast needs time to ferment the milk and flour mixture before the rest of the dough is added. A well-developed sponge gives the dough a stronger rise, so the sponge should be left to work before the butter, sugar, and remaining flour go in.

“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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