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Dessert

A Very Fine Pound Cake

A pound cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, nutmeg, brandy, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Very Fine Pound 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 oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add wine, brandy, nutmeg, and ¼ cup of flour.

  3. Whisk eggs until very thick, then stir them into the butter and sugar mixture gradually.

  4. Add remaining flour one-third at a time, beating well after each addition.

Bake

  1. Line pan with white paper, pour batter, and smooth top with a knife.

  2. Bake for about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Whisked eggs add air and structure, helping the cake rise and hold its crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the batter bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with butter.
Brandy and wine
Adds liquid moisture and aromatic flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Adding eggs slowly to the creamed butter and sugar keeps the emulsion stable. If the eggs are added too fast, the batter can curdle and lose the air needed for a light crumb.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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