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Dessert

A Common Cake

A cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, caraway seeds, raisin wine, sweet wine, lemon rind, ginger, and optional currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Illustration of A Common CakeIllustration

Why it works: Butter and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

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

Make the first mixture

  1. Mix ¾ pound of flour with ½ pound of butter, 4 ounces of sugar, 4 eggs, ½ ounce of caraway seeds, and ⅓ cup of raisin wine, and beat the mixture well.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the dough

  1. Rub 8 ounces of butter into 2 pounds of dried flour.

  2. Mix the buttered flour with 3 tablespoons of yeast to form a paste.

  3. Let the paste rise for 1.5 hours.

  4. Mix in the yolks and whites of 4 eggs beaten separately, 1 pound of sugar, and enough milk to achieve a proper thickness (about 1 pint).

  5. Add ⅓ cup of sweet wine, the rind of 1 lemon, and 1 teaspoon of ginger.

  6. Add either 1 pound of currants or some caraway seeds, and beat well.

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.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  2. Flour + raisintop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour and keeping the crumb soft.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and the separately beaten whites add lightness.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the paste rise and giving the cake an airy crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the crust.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Let the paste rise for 1.5 hours. The yeast needs enough time to ferment the dough; too short a rise leaves the cake dense, while the gas it produces gives the crumb its lift.

Flavor stand-ins for the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, raisin, wine, milk):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  3. Gingerabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, raisin, wine, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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