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Dessert

Soda Cake

A quick cake made with flour, butter, sugar, currants, egg, buttermilk, baking soda, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Soda Cake

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. 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).

Make the batter

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the sugar, currants, and mace and nutmeg.

  3. Beat the egg well and mix it with the dry ingredients.

  4. Leave 1 tablespoon of buttermilk to dissolve the baking soda, then add it to the batter and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered molds.

  2. Prick with a skewer; if it comes out clean, the cakes are done.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating the flour.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Buttermilk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a fine, tender texture.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in buttermilk before mixing it in. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it in buttermilk first spreads it evenly so the cake rises uniformly instead of in patches.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, currant, egg, buttermilk, nutmeg. 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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