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Dessert

Troy Loaf-cake

A light, nutmeg-flavored loaf cake baked with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Troy Loaf-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.

Prepare

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

  2. Sift the baking powder and flour together.

  3. Grease two loaf pans with lard and line them with greased parchment paper.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Add the egg yolks, cold water, and flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared pans, filling each about full.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Eggs
Yolks bind and enrich the batter, while whipped whites add lift and airy structure.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates the batter and yields a dense loaf.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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