Skip to main content
Dessert

Soda Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, baking soda, tartaric acid, butter, currants, candied lemon peel, milk, and optional eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Soda Cake

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 ↓

Soda 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).

  2. Sift the flour and carbonate of soda together to remove lumps.

  3. Rub in the butter or lard until well combined.

Make the batter

  1. Add the currants and candied lemon peel.

  2. Mix the tartaric acid or cream of tartar into the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and milk together, then add to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased tin and bake for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  2. Cut into squares for serving.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Tartaric acid or cream of tartar
Supplies the acid that activates the carbonate of soda for rising.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and softens the crumb.

The step that matters

Mixing in the acid and baking promptly. Carbonate of soda and the acid start producing gas as soon as they are moist together. Delaying the bake lets that gas escape, so the cake may rise poorly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cream, butter, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes