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Dessert

A Plain Cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with flour, currants, butter, cloves, caraway seeds, lemon extract, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Plain Cake

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.

Mix the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, currants, butter, cloves, caraway seeds, and lemon extract.

  2. Warm the milk slightly and mix in the yeast until dissolved.

  3. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until combined.

Rise and bake

  1. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise until doubled in size.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  3. Bake the cake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Clove + carawaytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Caraway + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, leavening the dough so it becomes light.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries the spice and lemon flavors.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and activates the yeast, forming a workable dough.
Currants
Add sweetness, chewy texture, and moisture pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast gas inflates the gluten network, which traps it and sets the crumb. Rising too briefly leaves the cake dense, while over-rising weakens the structure so it can collapse in the oven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, clove, caraway, lemon, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, clove, caraway, lemon, milk. 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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