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Dessert

Huckleberry Cakes

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, huckleberries, and optional spices.

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 ↓

Huckleberry Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the egg yolks and gradually stir in the sweet milk mixed with baking soda.

  3. Sift the flour with cream of tartar and fold it into the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  5. Gently fold in the huckleberries and spices if using.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Ice the cake with the remaining egg white.

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 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

Unsalted butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy structure to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and milk to produce rising gas.
Ripe huckleberries
Add moisture, tartness and fruit flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that makes the cake rise. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter, so the cake stays light instead of dense.

“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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