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Dessert

Bran Cake

A baked cake made with bran flour, eggs, milk, butter, and bicarbonate of soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bran Cake

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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the bran flour and bicarbonate of soda.

  2. In another bowl, beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Gradually add the bran mixture to the butter, mixing well.

  4. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  5. Slowly add the warm milk, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-buttered pans.

  2. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the cakes can be easily turned out.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it traps air for a lighter texture.
Prepared bran flour
Forms the main body of the cake, giving it its bran character and structure.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the bran mixture to the butter gradually. Adding dry ingredients slowly while mixing keeps the batter smooth and emulsified. Adding them all at once can cause lumps and uneven texture in the finished cake.

“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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