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Dessert

Cream Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with sour cream, brown sugar, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cream Spice Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sour cream and brown sugar until combined.

  2. Add the baking soda, baking powder, salt, ginger, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon; mix well.

  3. Sift in enough flour to create a thick batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center 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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the crumb tender and reacts with the leavening.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay soft.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift so the batter rises evenly in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Sift in enough flour to create a thick batter. Too little flour leaves a batter that spreads thin and bakes flat or gummy, while too much makes the cake dense and dry. Measuring flour by sifting and spooning it lightly keeps the thickness consistent.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, flour. 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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