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Dessert

Bread Cake, or French Loaf

A sweet loaf made with bread sponge, sugar, butter, eggs, nutmeg, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Cake, or French Loaf

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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and grated nutmeg, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the bread sponge and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add flour until the mixture is as stiff as common cake batter.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as it sets in the oven.
Bread sponge
Adds fermented flavour and moisture while lightening the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually until the batter is as stiff as common cake batter. Adding too much flour at once or too much overall makes the cake dense and dry, because gluten develops and starch absorbs liquid.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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