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Dessert

Alexandria Jam Cake

A moist cake made with blackberry jam, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, spices, and topped with a boiled sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Alexandria Jam 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.

Make the cake batter

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

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the blackberry jam, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda dissolved in sour cream.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

Bake and ice

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake for 25-30 minutes.

  2. For the icing, boil 1 cup of sugar with 4 tablespoons of water until it reaches a soft ball stage.

  3. Beat the egg white until stiff, then gradually add the hot syrup while continuing to beat.

  4. Add vanilla to taste and spread the icing between the layers and on top of the cake.

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. Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender crumb and fat-based richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Blackberry jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavor and moisture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed in and baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white while adding the hot syrup. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg white as it is beaten in slowly; adding it too fast or cold can leave the icing runny or grainy and unstable.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

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