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 ↓
A Cheap Seed Cake
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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Melt the butter with the milk until just warm.
Make the dough
Mix the flour, sugar, allspice, and yeast in a large bowl.
Add the warm butter and milk mixture to the dry ingredients and work into a good dough.
Let the dough rise in a warm place for a few minutes before baking.
Bake
Fold in seeds or currants as desired.
Bake for about 1 hour.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,359 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,302 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
- Butter
- Adds fat that enriches the crumb and gives a tender texture.
- Yeast
- Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
- Milk
- Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.
- Allspice
- Contributes warm aromatic flavour to the cake.
The step that matters
Adding the warm butter and milk mixture. The liquid should be only just warm. Yeast is a living organism that is killed by high heat, so if the mixture is too hot the dough will not rise properly.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, allspice, butter, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, allspice, butter, 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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