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Dessert

Spiced Mountain Cake

A spiced cake made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, spices, flour, baking powder, topped with soft sugar and cinnamon.

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

Spiced Mountain 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk, spices, flour, and baking powder.

  4. Fold in the egg whites beaten to a stiff froth.

  5. Pour the batter into a long shallow pan.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. After a minute or two, sprinkle soft sugar and cinnamon on top.

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness to the crumb through fat and emulsifying lecithin.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they trap air that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add fat for a tender, moist texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter and oven heat, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb while creaming with butter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg whites. Stirring hard deflates the foam, leaving a denser, flatter cake.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

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