Name: Dough Cake
Ingredients: 11 lbs dough; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; ½ cup moist sugar; ½ cup sultanas or currants; ½ cup good dripping

Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Dough 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, combine the dough, salt, sugar, sultanas or currants, and dripping.
Work all the ingredients well into the dough.

Bake

Transfer the mixture to a greased tin.
Bake for about 1 hour.

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.

Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Dough: Forms the base structure of the cake and carries the other ingredients.
Dripping: Adds fat, giving the cake moisture and a rich, tender crumb.
Moist sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown as it bakes.
Sultanas or currants: Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

“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.