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Dessert

A Good Pound Cake

A pound cake made with butter, eggs, flour, sugar, spices, wine, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Good Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Mix in the beaten egg whites and yolks.

  3. Combine the flour, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  4. Gradually work the dry ingredients into the butter and eggs.

  5. Beat the mixture for a full hour.

  6. Add the wine and carraways.

Bake

  1. Butter a pan.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for one 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.

  1. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake its rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and whites add structure and lift as the cake sets.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking to form the cake's firm, sliceable structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air in the creamed butter for a fine texture.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture for a full hour. Long beating incorporates air that gives lift and a fine crumb. Once flour is added, overmixing can develop gluten and make the cake tough, so the batter should be beaten only as the method directs.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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