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Dessert

Huckleberry Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking powder, huckleberries, and dusted with sugar.

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

Huckleberry 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until light.

  2. Add the milk, egg yolks, nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking powder mixed with flour.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Toss the huckleberries with some flour and gently fold them in without mashing.

  2. Pour the batter into buttered pans, about 1 inch thick.

  3. Dust the tops with sugar and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  4. Let the cake sit overnight for better flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift and structure, while yolks add richness and set the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Huckleberries
Add moisture, tart flavor, and color throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites and huckleberries. Stiff whites hold air that gives the cake its lift, so folding gently keeps that air in. Handling the batter roughly deflates it, and mashing the berries stains and wets the batter.

“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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