Skip to main content
Dessert

Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, sour milk, spices, brandy, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Spice 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 ↓

Spice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and add the light sugar and yolks of the eggs.

  2. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

  3. Gradually add the flour, alternating with the sour milk.

  4. Mix in the grated nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and brandy.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of vinegar and add it to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in molds immediately after mixing until golden brown.

  2. Serve fresh.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and whites trapped air, giving the cake structure and a light crumb.
Flour
Starch and gluten set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Light sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and vinegar to release gas that lifts the batter.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, spiced aroma that defines the flavor of this cake.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after adding the dissolved baking soda. Baking soda reacts with acid as soon as it is dissolved, releasing gas bubbles that lighten the batter. If the batter waits before baking, the bubbles escape and the cake rises less, so it should go into the molds right after mixing.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

More spice cake recipes

Raisin 13Molasses 12Eggless 6Chocolate 5Golden 4Christmas 3 See all 307 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes