Skip to main content
Baking

Clove Cake

A spiced cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, raisins, sour milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Clove Cake

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Clove 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 until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the sour milk.

  5. Fold in the chopped raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps lighten the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Alternating dry ingredients with sour milk. Adding the dry ingredients gradually and alternating with the liquid keeps the batter smooth and well emulsified. Adding everything at once can overmix the flour, developing gluten and producing a tougher cake.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes