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Dessert

A Good Family Cake

A moist cake made with dough, butter, sugar, cream, eggs, allspice, currants, candied peel, and optional caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Good Family 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).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the dough, butter, sugar, cream, eggs, allspice, currants, and candied peel or caraway seeds. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1.5 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Dough
Forms the base body of the cake, giving it bulk and structure.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the cake as it bakes.
Currants
Provide pockets of concentrated fruit sweetness and chew.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking time depends on pan size and oven accuracy. Pulling the cake too early leaves the centre wet and underset, while overbaking dries it out. Testing the centre confirms the eggs have set.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicethe original
  4. Macefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream, egg, currant. 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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