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Dessert

Thanksgiving Cake

A sweet bread cake with maple-sugar frosting and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Thanksgiving 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 batter

  1. Mix the bread dough, butter, sugar, eggs, and salt together until smooth.

  2. Let the mixture rise until it has doubled in bulk.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Once cooled, pour maple-sugar frosting over the cake.

  3. Decorate with pecan or hickory nuts and ornamental frosting.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread dough
Provides the yeasted base that rises and gives the cake its bread-like crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture while binding the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until doubled. Rising is what gives the dough its lightness. If it is underproofed the cake will be dense, and overproofed dough can collapse in the oven, so the cook should judge by volume rather than time.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, egg. 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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