Skip to main content
Dessert

Milkless, Eggless, Butterless Cake

A cake made without milk, eggs, or butter, using lard, raisins, nuts, sugar, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Milkless, Eggless, Butterless Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit mixture

  1. Combine raisins, sugar, lard, salt, spices, and water in a saucepan and cook for 3 minutes.

  2. Set aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. Sift and measure 2 cups of cake flour.

  2. Add baking powder and sift again three times.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in 1 tablespoon of cold water.

  4. Pour the cooked mixture into a mixing bowl.

  5. Add the flour.

  6. Add the dissolved baking soda.

  7. Beat the batter hard for several minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf or sheet pan.

  2. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C).

  3. Ice if desired.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cake flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together once it bakes.
Lard
Adds fat for a tender crumb and moist texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake moist and tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture to the cooked mixture.
Baking soda
Produces gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise further.

The step that matters

Beat the batter hard for several minutes. Vigorous beating develops the flour's gluten and traps air in the batter. With no eggs or butter, this mixing does much of the structural and lifting work, so skipping or shortening it can leave a dense cake.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, cinnamon, clove, 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes