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Dessert

Plain Cake

A simple cake made with flour, clarified dripping, currants, allspice, brown sugar, and milk.

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

Plain Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a loaf pan with a little dripping.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Rub the clarified dripping into the flour until no lumps remain.

  3. Clean the currants by rubbing them in a cloth. Add the currants, allspice, and brown sugar to the flour mixture, then mix the ingredients together with a wooden spoon.

  4. Pour in the milk and mix until well combined.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool on its side.

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. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 starch and gluten that form the cake's structure.
Clarified dripping
Coats flour particles to tenderise the crumb and adds richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a batter and adds moisture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.

Swap the currant

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

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

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