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Dessert

Hovis Newmarket Sandwich

A sweet roll made with Hovis flour, butter, sugar, eggs, currants, and leavening, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hovis Newmarket Sandwich

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.

Make the mixture

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add one egg at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make a paste with 1 lb of Hovis flour and ½ lb of butter.

  2. Line a flat tin with the paste.

  3. Sprinkle currants over the paste and spread the mixture on top.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Finish

  1. Decorate with icing sugar on top.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Hovis flour
Provides the main structure that holds the paste and sponge together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the paste and mixture hold together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps give a lighter texture.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping bind the creamed mixture as it sets in the oven.

The step that matters

Add the eggs one at a time. Adding each egg gradually and mixing well lets it blend into the creamed butter and sugar, so the mixture stays smooth instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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