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Dessert

Biscuit Cake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, eggs, caraway seeds, mace, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Biscuit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter until smooth.

  3. Add the sifted sugar and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then beat the yolks.

  2. Combine the yolks, flour, spices, and caraway seeds with the butter mixture.

  3. Mix everything together thoroughly.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased and lined tin.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour or 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.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Caraway + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Whites whisked to stiff peaks lighten the batter and help it rise; yolks add richness and binding.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Caraway seeds
Add aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites until stiff. Under-whisked whites won't hold air, so the cake rises less and turns out denser. Over-whisked whites turn grainy and collapse, so fold them in gently rather than stirring hard.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, caraway, nutmeg, sugar. 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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