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Dessert

Lunch Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, spices, eggs, milk, and optional currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lunch Cake

Why it works: Caraway and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 188 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lunch Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the butter or lard until well combined.

  3. Stir in the castor sugar and any preferred flavorings.

  4. Quickly mix in the beaten eggs and milk.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered tins.

  2. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter or lard
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure while adding moisture.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes through evenly.

The step that matters

Quickly mix in the beaten eggs and milk.. Once liquid meets flour, gluten starts to develop, and overmixing makes the cake tough. Mixing briefly keeps the crumb tender while the baking powder is still active.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

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