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Bread

Sweet Bread Cake

A yeast-leavened sweet bread cake with butter, sugar, orange peel, caraway, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Bread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in the tepid water.

  2. Mix the yeast mixture into the flour and let it rise for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the melted butter, sugar, orange peel, caraway powder, and cinnamon.

  4. Let the mixture rise for another 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered tin.

  2. Bake in a very hot oven (400°F) for the first 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350°F 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. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen dough and baked crumb together.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the oven.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the crumb if included.

The step that matters

Bake in a very hot oven, then reduce the temperature. Starting hot gives a quick oven spring and sets the outside, then lowering the heat lets the centre cook through without over-browning the crust.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, caraway, cinnamon, 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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