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Dessert

Soda Cake

A quick bread with flour, currants, sultanas, brown sugar, butter, dripping, candied peel, baking soda, milk, eggs, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Soda Cake

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 ↓

Soda 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. Sift the flour into a bowl.

  2. Rub the butter and dripping into the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Add the currants, sultanas, brown sugar, nutmeg, and candied peel.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of milk and add it to the mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the remaining milk, then add to the bowl.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a mold lined with oiled paper.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours.

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. 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the mixture to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to browning and a deeper flavor.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda before adding it. Baking soda needs to be evenly dispersed in the liquid so it reacts uniformly with the acid in the batter. Clumps can leave bitter spots or uneven rising.

Swap the currant

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

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

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