Name: Common Bread Cake
Ingredients: 1 quartern loaf of dough; 2 ounces of butter; 2 ounces of Lisbon sugar; 8 ounces of currants; 1 teacupful of good milk

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 ↓

Common Bread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

Take a quarter loaf of dough from a batch of white bread.
Knead the butter, sugar, and currants into the dough.
Warm the butter in the milk.
Optionally, add more butter, sugar, or eggs.

Bake

Bake in a pan rather than as a loaf for a softer outside.

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).
Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Dough: Provides the bread structure and the base that the enriched cake is built on.
Butter: Adds fat for a richer, more tender crumb and a softer eating texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly during baking.
Currants: Add sweetness and fruity flavour, and moisture pockets throughout the dough.
Milk: Adds moisture and softness, and helps the butter blend into the dough.