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Dessert

A Plain Cake

A simple cake made with clarified beef dripping, flour, sugar, caraway seeds, milk, and soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Mix the dough

  1. Rub the clarified beef dripping into the flour.

  2. Add the sugar and caraway seeds, mixing well.

  3. Dissolve the carbonate of soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Mix everything together until well combined.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ hours.

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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Clarified beef dripping
Adds fat that coats the flour, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Carbonate of soda
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb moist.
Caraway seeds
Provide the distinctive aromatic flavour of the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the carbonate of soda in the milk. Leavening only works if it is fully dissolved and evenly distributed through the batter. Pockets of undissolved soda can cause uneven rising and bitter patches of residue in the finished cake.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, sugar, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, sugar, milk. 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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