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Dessert

Dough Cake

A sweet cake made from light bread dough, butter, sugar, egg, spices, and raisins, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Dough Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the light bread dough, butter, sugar, egg, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and baking soda dissolved in a little hot water.

  2. Beat the mixture thoroughly by hand.

  3. Fold in the chopped raisins dusted with flour.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the dough rise in the pans for 30 minutes before baking.

  2. Bake slowly 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Light bread dough
Provides the base structure and a soft, bready crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and adds structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Releases gas that helps the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until golden brown. Gentle heat lets the centre of the cake cook through before the outside browns too far. Baking too fast can leave the middle dense or raw while the crust darkens.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon, raisin, 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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