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Dessert

Soda Cake

A quick baked cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, baking soda, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Soda Cake

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 ↓

Soda Cake

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the baking soda with the flour. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Add the sugar and mix with the milk.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately for at least 30 minutes.

  2. Combine the beaten eggs with the powdered sugar and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and caraway seeds, stirring until combined.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes in the hot oven.

  3. Once baked, turn the cake out of the dish and let it cool upside down.

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. 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Whipped separately, the yolks and whites give the cake lift and a light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb, and is rubbed into the flour first.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps bind the batter into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs separately. Beating the yolks and whites separately for a long time traps air in the whites, which is what lifts the cake. Under-beaten whites produce a dense, flat result.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, milk, egg. 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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