Skip to main content
Bread

Dutch Cake

A sweet yeast bread with raisins, currants, citron, and spices, baked to a golden loaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Dutch 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.

Make the sponge

  1. Combine 1 pound of flour with the yeast and enough milk to make a sponge.

  2. Let the sponge sit until bubbly.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter, lard, and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins, currants, and citron to the creamed mixture.

  3. Mix in the sponge.

  4. Gradually add the remaining flour until well combined.

  5. Knead the dough until smooth.

  6. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a greased pan.

  2. Let the loaf rise again before baking.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough and give it structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. The yeast needs warmth and time to produce enough gas. Under-proofed dough bakes up dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose structure.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes