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Dessert

Martha Washington Tea Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, sour milk, eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice, nutmeg, mace, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Martha Washington Tea Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar to a cream.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. Mix in the milk and flour alternately.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Flavor the fruit and stir in last.

  2. Bake for 2 hours and 15 minutes, covering with buttered paper to prevent browning too fast.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites beaten in lighten the texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the crumb tender.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the butter cream to a light base.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake for 2 hours and 15 minutes, covering with buttered paper. A long bake at moderate heat can brown the outside before the center sets. Covering the cake with buttered paper slows surface browning so the interior cooks through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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