Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Loaf Cake

A yeast-based loaf cake with butter, sugar, sour milk, eggs, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Plain Loaf Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Plain 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sour milk.

  4. Add the baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and raisins, and mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

  2. Bake for about 50-60 minutes or until 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that makes the cake tender and rich when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with butter, giving a softer crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour milk to produce gas that leavens the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar together traps air in the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives it an even, tender crumb. Under-creamed butter leaves a denser loaf.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes