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Baking

Plain Cake

A simple cake made with dripping, flour, baking powder, sugar, nutmeg, candied peel, currants or caraway, and water or milk.

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

Why it works: Nutmeg and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,746 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Plain Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Rub the dripping into the flour.

  2. Add baking powder, brown sugar, nutmeg, candied peel or rind, and currants or caraway seeds.

  3. Mix with cold water or milk until combined.

Bake

  1. Grease the tin well and bake immediately in a good oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. For a richer cake, use butter and add 1 egg.

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. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Dripping
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and a crumbly texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after mixing. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet, so waiting lets bubbles escape and weakens the rise. Getting the tin greased and the oven hot first keeps the batter lift working in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, orange, milk. 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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