Name: Common Bread-cake
Ingredients: 1 quart of white bread dough; 2 ounces butter; 2 ounces Lisbon sugar; 8 ounces currants; ½ cup good milk; 1 ounce butter or sugar (optional); 1 or 2 eggs (optional); 1 tea-cupful 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 moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Take a quart of white bread dough and knead in 2 ounces of butter, 2 ounces of sugar, and 8 ounces of currants.
Warm the butter in ½ cup of milk.
Optionally, add 1 ounce of butter or sugar, or 1 or 2 eggs for a richer cake.
Optionally, add 1 tea-cupful of raw cream for improved flavor.
Bake in a pan instead of a loaf for a softer crust.

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

White bread dough: Forms the base of the cake, giving it a bready structure and crumb.
Butter: Adds fat for a softer, richer texture and flavor.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.
Currants: Add sweet fruit flavor and pockets of moisture throughout the cake.
Eggs: Optional; add richness and help set the crumb.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, milk, egg, tea, cream):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Peachfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, milk, egg, tea, cream. 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.