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Baking

Oxford Cake

A sweet cake made from flour, baking powder, egg, cream, suet and powdered sugar, baked on buttered tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Oxford Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, rub the flour, baking powder, suet, and powdered sugar together.

  2. Mix in the cream, then add the egg and combine well.

  3. Spoon the mixture onto buttered baking tins.

  4. If using yeast, warm the milk slightly and strain it through the yeast as for bread.

  5. Add the yeast mixture last and let the dough rise.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps set the structure as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, producing a tender, moist crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that coats flour particles, giving a short, tender texture.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves easily into the mixture for even sweetness.

The step that matters

Rub the fat into the flour. Rubbing suet into the flour with the baking powder coats the flour particles and spreads the fat evenly. This limits gluten development and gives an even, tender crumb rather than a dense or uneven one.

“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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