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Bread

Bread Cake

A cake made from bread dough, eggs, sugar, butter, spices, baking soda, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Bread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, work the butter into the dough until well combined.

  2. Add the sugar and cinnamon, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks, followed by the beaten egg whites.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and mix it in.

  5. Finally, fold in the floured raisins.

Bake

  1. Divide the mixture into two pans and bake.

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Dough
Provides the yeasted bread base that gives this cake its bread-like crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, with the whites lightening the batter when beaten in.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the mixture to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved and evenly mixed so it reacts uniformly. Clumps can leave bitter spots and uneven rising in the cake.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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