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Dessert

Bath Cakes

A yeast-leavened cake made with butter, flour, eggs, sugar, and baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bath Cakes

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bath Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and yeast, then mix well.

  3. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  4. Once risen, fold in the sifted sugar.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough into thin sheets and cut into rounds.

  2. Place on baking tins and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light and fluffy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help bind the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown during baking.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas. If the dough stays cold or rises too little, the cakes will be dense rather than light and fluffy.

“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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