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Dessert

Another Pound-cake

A pound cake made with equal parts flour, sugar, butter, eggs, brandy, and citrus rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Pound-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Place the butter in a bowl and cream it with a wooden spoon until thick and creamy.

  2. Gradually add the flour and sugar, then the eggs, mixing until fully incorporated.

  3. Stir in the brandy and mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake in greased tin hoops or on buttered baking sheets lined with buttered paper to prevent over-browning.

  2. Optionally, add dried cherries, currants, pistachios, or candied peel.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Their proteins set during baking and give the cake structure and richness.
Flour
Its proteins and starch set during baking to form the cake's main structure.
Sugar
Creamed with butter it helps trap air and adds sweetness and browning.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and a little moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter until thick and creamy traps air bubbles that expand in the oven and lighten the crumb. Under-creamed butter gives a dense, heavy cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

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