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Dessert

Bread Cake

A sweet bread cake made with dough, butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, milk, currants, raisins, nutmeg, cloves, and optional citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Prepare

  1. Take 3 cups of dough after its second rising.

  2. Cream 1 cup of butter with 2 cups of white sugar.

  3. Beat 4 egg yolks very light.

  4. Add the creamed butter and sugar.

Mix the batter

  1. Mix in the dissolved baking soda, 2 tablespoons of sweet milk, nutmeg, cloves, and the dough. Stir until well mixed.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites and the fruit. Beat the mixture hard.

Bake

  1. Pour it into 2 buttered pans.

  2. Let it rise until light.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dough
Provides leavening and a yeasted, bread-like crumb structure to the cake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whipped whites help the batter rise and set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor when creamed with sugar.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps tenderize it when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the batter to produce gas, helping it rise and lighten.
Currants
Add chewy fruit pieces and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture hard. Vigorous beating after folding in the egg whites and fruit builds air and gluten structure that gives the cake lift; under-mixing leaves it dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, raisin, nutmeg, clove. 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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Currant 12Diet 12Raisin 12German 5Soda 3Sweet 3 See all 95 →

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