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Dessert

Rich Pound Cake

A dense cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, candied peel, currants, sultanas, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Rich Pound Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and continue beating.

  3. Add the flour, then the beaten egg yolks, and mix well.

  4. Stir in the grated lemon rind, chopped candied peel, currants, and sultanas.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Butter a cake tin, pour in the mixture, and bake for 2 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and gives the cake its rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding, while whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the creamed butter for a smooth texture.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives lift. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the batter, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined, keeping the air in the mixture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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