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Dessert

Spice Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, spices, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs.

  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the milk and beaten eggs to the mixture and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and spices, mixing until smooth.

  5. Fold in the raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 1 hour on the bottom shelf of the oven.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake bakes and sets.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour and spices, mixing until smooth. Adding flour gradually and mixing only until smooth helps keep the batter even. Overmixing once flour is in develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, 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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