Name: Nut Loaf Cake
Ingredients: 1 ½ cups sugar; ½ cup butter; ¾ cup sour milk; 1 cup chopped nuts; 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour; 4 eggs, separated; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 heaping teaspoon baking powder; ½ grated nutmeg

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Nut Loaf 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.

Make the batter

Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the egg yolks and mix well.
Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it alternately with 2 cups of flour sifted with the baking powder.
Mix in the chopped nuts coated with ½ cup of flour, nutmeg, and the beaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.
Ice the top and sides with boiled icing.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nuts + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together239 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,180 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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: Egg yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten its structure as the cake sets.
Baking soda: Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, adding lift to the crumb.
All-purpose flour: Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sour milk: Its acidity activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives lift; overmixing after they go in deflates them and yields a dense cake.

Swap the nuts

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pistachiofits better
Nutsthe original

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