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Dessert

Soda Cake

A quick bread made with flour, margarine, sugar, currants, candied peel, milk, egg, baking soda, vinegar, and golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Soda Cake

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Soda 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the margarine, sugar, vinegar, and Lyle's Golden Syrup.

  2. Beat in the egg until well combined.

  3. Add the flour, currants, and candied peel to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Beat the entire mixture thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased tin.

  2. Bake 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Margarine
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that lifts the cake.
Vinegar
Provides the acid that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the acid in the batter to release carbon dioxide gas, which lifts the cake. The gas starts forming as soon as the two meet, so the batter should be thoroughly beaten and baked without delay.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, milk, egg, vinegar, syrup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, egg, vinegar, syrup. 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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