Name: Marble or Spiced Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound cake batter; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon; 2 teaspoons ground mace; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 1 teaspoon ground allspice; 1 finely grated nutmeg; Butter for greasing the pan

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Marble or Spiced 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

Prepare a pound cake batter and mix in the baking powder.
Take one-third of the batter and stir in the cinnamon, mace, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg.
Grease a baking pan with butter.

Assemble and bake

Layer the plain batter and spiced batter alternately in the pan until full, finishing with the plain batter.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until done.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Ground cinnamon: Adds warm, sweet aroma that contrasts with the plain batter.
Ground mace: Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the spiced batter.
Ground cloves: Adds a strong, pungent aroma that deepens the spiced batter's flavour.
Ground allspice: Adds a blended warm aroma that rounds out the spice mix.
Nutmeg: Adds a sweet, warm aroma to the spiced batter.

The step that matters

Layering the batters. Spoon the plain and spiced batters in alternating layers rather than stirring them together. Keeping the two batters separate is what creates the marbled pattern, and pouring them carelessly lets them blend into an even colour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg, butter):

Cardamomfits better
Gingerfits better
Winter savoryfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg, butter. 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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Clove Cake53 recipes

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Marble or Spiced Cake