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Dessert

Clove Cake

A spiced cake made with butter, brown sugar, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Clove Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Clove 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg and sour milk, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the ground cloves, grated nutmeg, ground cinnamon, and salt.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  6. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined.

  7. Fold in the raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavour to the cake.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the cake structure as it sets.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure, which sets as the starch cooks in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the wet ingredients. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough. Overmixing toughens the crumb.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, sugar, nutmeg, milk, cinnamon, 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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