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Dessert

Baker's Pound Cake

A rich cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and spices, folded with fruit and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Baker's Pound 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. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Dissolve the ammonia in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Season with lemon, mace, and cinnamon to taste.

  5. Fold in raisins and mixed fruit.

  6. Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 rich, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent, releasing gas to help the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff. Adding flour gradually and stopping at a stiff batter prevents overmixing and a tough, dense crumb, since gluten develops as flour is worked in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, lemon, cinnamon, raisin. 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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