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Dessert

Twelfth Cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with flour, milk, butter, sugar, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Twelfth Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make an opening in the center of the flour.

  2. Set a sponge with the yeast and warm milk.

  3. Surround the sponge with the butter, sugar, currants, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and candied peels.

  4. When the mixture has risen, mix everything together with a little warm milk.

Bake and finish

  1. Prepare the baking hoops as for a bride cake.

  2. Fill the hoops and bake until done.

  3. When nearly cool, ice the cakes with sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough and cake together as it bakes.
Yeast
Ferments the sponge so the dough rises before baking, giving a lighter crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the crumb and carrying flavor.
Currants
Provide fruit sweetness, chewy texture, and visible dark pieces throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise before mixing. The yeast sponge must rise fully before the other ingredients are mixed in. Yeast needs time to ferment and build gas bubbles; mixing too early leaves the dough dense and under-risen.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, clove, mace. 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.

More twelfth cake recipes

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