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Dessert

A Plain Cake

A cake made from rice flour, wheat flour, eggs, powdered sugar, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Plain Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine the rice flour, wheat flour, and powdered sugar.

Make and bake

  1. Add the beaten eggs and caraway seeds, and mix well for one hour.

  2. Pour the batter into a prepared tin lined with buttered writing paper.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes in the quick oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Wheat + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + carawaytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air and, once baked, set the cake's structure.
Rice flour
Provides the light, fine base of the cake's crumb.
Wheat flour
Gluten in the flour gives the cake structure and holds its shape.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves smoothly into the batter.
Caraway seeds
Add a distinctive aromatic flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing the batter for one hour. Beating the eggs into the batter for a long time traps air that gives the cake its lift. Mixing too little leaves the cake dense, while overmixing after the flour is added can toughen it by developing gluten.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, wheat, egg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, wheat, egg, 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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