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Dessert

Bread Cake

A sweet cake made from bread sponge, butter, sugar, molasses, eggs, flour, raisins, spices, and leavening agents, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the molasses and eggs, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and allspice.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

  5. Fold in the raisins.

  6. Moisten the baking soda with a little sour milk or boiling water before adding it to the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with a hint of acidity.

The step that matters

Moisten the baking soda before adding it to the batter. Baking soda needs moisture and an acid to activate. Dissolving it in a little sour milk or boiling water helps it disperse evenly, so the cake rises uniformly instead of leaving pockets or bitter spots.

“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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