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Dessert

Loaf Cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with flour, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, spices, and optional raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Loaf Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Stir 2 quarts of flour into 1 pint of slightly warmed milk and 1 small teacup of yeast.

  2. Place the mixture near the fire to rise quickly.

  3. Once risen, work in 4 beaten eggs, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, ⅓ cup of currant jelly, 1 grated nutmeg, and some chipped citron.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together 1 pound of sugar and ¾ pound of softened butter until white.

  2. Combine the creamed mixture with the flour mixture and add 1 quart of sifted flour.

  3. Beat the entire mixture by hand for 10 to 15 minutes, then let it rise again until spongy and light.

  4. If desired, fold in 1½ pounds of raisins just before placing the batter in the pans.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered cake pans and let them stand for 15 to 20 minutes before baking.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once mixed and risen.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn light and spongy.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the creamed mixture hold air.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps creaming trap air for a lighter crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the batter by hand. Beating develops the gluten in the flour and traps air, giving the cake its structure and spongy texture. Too little beating leaves a dense loaf, and the second rise depends on that aerated batter.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More loaf cake recipes

Chocolate 35French 25Raisin 19Indian 17Coconut 16Plain 13 See all 114 →

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