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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spice Cake

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 ↓

Spice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the spices, beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and rind.

  3. Sift in part of the flour with baking powder and salt.

  4. Mix in the milk.

  5. Add the remaining flour.

  6. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake until the cake leaves the sides of the pan.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and whipped whites help the cake rise and stay light.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a soft, pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air that makes the cake light. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates the foam and produces a dense cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, cinnamon, flour, nutmeg, allspice. 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 →

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