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Dessert

Lincolnshire Cake

A sweet bread cake made with bread dough, lard, currants, brown sugar, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,398 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Lincolnshire Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Mix the bread dough with the lard until well combined.

  2. Add the currants, brown sugar, and salt; mix thoroughly.

  3. Divide the mixture into two cakes.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  5. Let the cakes rest for a week or more before cutting.

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. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Bread dough
Forms the bulk and structure of the cake, with yeast giving a light, airy crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Currants
Add pockets of fruit sweetness and moisture as they plump during baking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavor, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the cakes rest before cutting. Resting for a week or more lets the flavors mellow and the moisture spread evenly through the crumb, so the cake cuts cleanly and tastes better. Cutting too soon gives a sharper, less cohesive result.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar. 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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