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Dessert

Plain Pound-cake

A butter-based cake made with eggs, brandy, lime zest, and flour, baked at 350°F for one hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Pound-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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter in a bowl until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs and beat until light.

  3. Mix in the brandy and lime zest.

  4. Gradually work in the flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a pan and bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lime + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar-free batter to trap air and give a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter rise and set as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and a little moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs until light. Beating air into the eggs gives the batter lift before baking. Adding the flour too early or overmixing once it is in can make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the lime

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, brandy, flour. 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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