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Dessert

For Soft Cake Machine

A cake made with powdered sugar, lard, butter, salt, eggs, ammonia, baking soda, milk, lemon oil, mace, and soft flour, finished with currants or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and condensed milk work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

For Soft Cake Machine

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 dough

  1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the powdered sugar, lard, butter, and salt.

  2. Add the eggs, ammonia, baking soda, and condensed milk, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate the lemon oil and mace into the mixture.

  4. Gradually add the soft flour until fully combined.

Top and bake

  1. Dip some portions in currants, some in nonpareil sugar, some in coarse sugar, and some in shredded coconut.

  2. 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. Sugar + condensed milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour 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

Soft flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps it soft.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, contributing to a tender texture and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give a fine, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic components to help the cake rise and brown.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, condensed milk, lemon, 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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