Name: Common Bread Cake
Ingredients: 1 quartern loaf of bread dough; 2 ounces butter; 2 ounces Lisbon sugar; 8 ounces currants; 1 teacup of good milk; 1 ounce butter (optional); 1 ounce sugar (optional); 1 teacup of raw cream (optional)

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Common Bread Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

Take a quantity of bread dough equivalent to a quarter loaf.
Warm the butter in the milk.
Knead in the butter, sugar, and currants.

Bake

Optionally, add more butter or sugar for better flavor.
Optionally, add raw cream for improvement.
Bake in a pan 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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread dough: Forms the base structure of the cake, giving it a bread-like crumb.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps browning during baking.
Currants: Provide bursts of sweetness and fruit flavor throughout the cake.
Milk: Adds moisture and softens the dough.