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Dessert

Bath Cakes

Bath Cakes are a sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, caraway seeds, brandy, white wine, rose-water, and egg white, sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Bath Cakes

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 ↓

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.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the flour and caraway seeds, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the brandy, white wine, and rose-water to form a paste.

  5. Roll out the dough thinly on a floured surface.

Bake

  1. Brush the top with egg white or rose-water and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Bake on a greased baking sheet until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Caraway + rosetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the top brown when baked.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Egg white
Brushed on top to give a glossy finish and help the sugar stick.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor while moistening the dough into a paste.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough thinly. Thin dough bakes through and turns crisp rather than soft or doughy in the centre. Uneven thickness gives uneven browning, so some pieces may burn while others stay pale.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, brandy, white wine, rose, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, brandy, white wine, rose, egg. 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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