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Dessert

A Good Light Luncheon-cake

A yeast-based cake with butter, flour, sugar, milk, eggs, 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 Light 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.

Make the dough

  1. Break down the butter into the flour, then work the mixture into crumbs.

  2. Mix in the salt and pounded sugar.

  3. Hollow the center of the dough.

  4. Stir in the yeast diluted with warm milk.

  5. Mix enough surrounding flour to form a thick batter.

  6. Cover the dough with a cloth.

  7. Let it rise for 1 to 1.5 hours until very light.

Add the eggs and citron

  1. Add nearly-boiling milk to the eggs.

  2. Mix the eggs with the other ingredients.

  3. Gradually beat in the additional pounded sugar and grated nutmeg.

  4. Strew the candied citron over the mixture, then fold the citron into the batter.

  5. Let the batter rise again for about 45 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-buttered tin.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for at least 1 hour and 10 minutes without moving it.

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 structure of the cake and holds the batter together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast, giving the dough moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light crumb. Rising too little leaves the cake dense, and the dough should be fully risen before baking.

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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