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Dessert

Bath Cakes

A yeast‑leavened sweet bread made with butter, flour, eggs, yeast, and sugar, baked until light and fluffy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bath Cakes

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bath Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and yeast, then set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  3. Once risen, mix in the sifted sugar.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough into thin sheets and cut into rounds.

  2. Place the rounds on baking tins and bake until light and fluffy at 400°F (200°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and keeps the crumb tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as the dough forms.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure to the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully. Yeast needs time in a warm place to produce the gas that lifts the dough. If the dough is not allowed to rise fully before the sugar is added and the dough is shaped, the cakes will likely turn out dense rather than light and fluffy.

“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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