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Dessert

A Good Ligdt Luncheon-cake

A sweet yeast cake with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, nutmeg, and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

A Good Ligdt Luncheon-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Break down the butter into the flour and work it into crumbs lightly.

  2. Mix in the salt and pounded sugar, then hollow the center.

  3. Stir in the yeast diluted with warm milk until a thick batter forms.

  4. Cover with flour and a cloth, and let it rise for 1 to 1.5 hours until very light.

Enrich and shape

  1. Once risen, add the whisked eggs and enough nearly-boiling milk to warm them.

  2. Mix in the remaining sugar and grated nutmeg, then fold in the candied citron.

  3. Let it rise again for about 45 minutes.

  4. Transfer to a well-buttered tin and bake at 400°F (200°C) for at least 1 hour and 10 minutes without moving it until set.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the risen dough together.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the crumb during baking.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before adding the eggs. Yeast needs time to build gas and structure; adding eggs and milk too early or rising too briefly leaves a dense, heavy cake instead of a light one.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk, 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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