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Dessert

Bath Cakes

A sweet roll made with butter, flour, yeast, warm cream, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bath Cakes

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bath Cakes

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.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Mix in the yeast and enough warm cream to form a light paste.

  3. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  4. Once risen, fold in the carraway seeds.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cakes the size of small French rolls.

  2. Bake on buttered tins at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Fresh butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and limiting gluten formation.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they rise and bake.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise, giving the cakes a light, airy texture.
Warm cream
Adds moisture to form the paste and gives the dough a soft, rich crumb.
Carraway seeds
Contribute a distinctive aroma and flavour to the cakes.

The step that matters

Set the mixture in a warm place to rise. Yeast activity depends on warmth; if the dough is too cold it rises slowly or not at all, and if too hot the yeast can die or the dough can over-ferment. Rising fully before shaping gives the cakes their lightness.

“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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