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Dessert

Spiced Mountain Cake

A spiced cake made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, spices, flour, and baking powder, topped with 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 yolks of the eggs and then the milk, spices, flour, and baking powder.

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

  4. 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 the top with soft sugar and cinnamon.

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it bind and set.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, causing the cake to rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that lightens the batter. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser cake with less rise.

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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