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Dessert

Bristol Cake

A moist cake with currants, lemon rind, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Bristol Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Add the sugar and mix until well combined.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then add them to the butter and sugar mixture alternately with the flour. Mix well after each addition.

  2. Stir in the currants, lemon rind, milk, and baking powder.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased and lined round cake tin.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for about 1 hour.

  2. Just before the cake is done, brush the top with egg white and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure as its proteins set during baking.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb when creamed with sugar.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs alternately with the flour. Adding the eggs in portions and mixing well after each addition keeps the batter emulsified. A split batter can bake up heavy and coarse, so the cake's texture depends on this step.

Swap the currant

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

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

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