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Common Bread Cake

A sweet bread cake made with white bread dough, butter, sugar, currants or raisins, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Common Bread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Cut a loaf from well-risen white bread dough.

  2. Knead in the butter, sugar, and currants or raisins.

  3. Warm the butter in the milk and add to the dough.

Rise and bake

  1. Place the mixture in a buttered pan and let it rise before baking.

  2. Bake until golden brown and allow to cool.

  3. For better flavor, add a little extra butter and 1-2 eggs with some cream.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread dough
Provides the yeasted structure that traps gas and gives the cake its airy crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and softens the crumb as it melts into the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Currants or raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and fruity flavor throughout the loaf.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise before baking. Yeast needs time to produce gas that puffs the dough. Baking before it has risen fully gives a dense, heavy cake instead of a light one.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, 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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