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Dessert

Clay Cake

A buttery, lemony cake with nutmeg, made from butter, sugar, flour, cream, eggs, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Clay 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. Beat the butter until very light.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the flour and cream gradually.

  4. Add the grated nutmeg and lemon zest and juice.

  5. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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 tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when beaten with butter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the crumb soft and rich.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and help bind the batter as they set in the oven.
Lemon
Its zest and juice add aroma and a bright acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs in one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one emulsify fully into the butter and sugar mixture. Adding them too fast can cause curdling, which may leave the cake dense or greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, cream, nutmeg, 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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