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Dessert

Fbench Loaf-cake

A loaf cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, grated lemon peel and grated coconut, baked in loaf pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fbench Loaf-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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

  3. Add the sugar, butter, and milk, and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar into the flour.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the batter.

  3. Stir in the grated lemon peel and grated coconut.

  4. Pour the batter into round loaf pans.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the loaf rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lift the crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Sifting the baking soda and cream of tartar into the flour. Sifting spreads the leavening agents evenly through the flour so the batter rises uniformly. Unevenly distributed baking soda can leave bitter or dense pockets and uneven rise.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream, flour, coconut. 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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