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Dessert

Spice Cake

A sweet, spiced cake made with barley flour, raisins, and a syrup base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spice Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the fat, sugar, and egg yolk together.

  2. Add the syrup and mix well.

  3. Sift together the dry ingredients and add them alternately with the liquid ingredients.

  4. Add the vanilla and fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake for one hour, raising the temperature to 400°F (200°C) after 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 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

Barley flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as the batter bakes.
Eggs
Egg whites trapped by folding add lift, and the yolks add richness and binding.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake stay tender and browned.
Fat
Coats flour particles and creams with sugar to give a tender, rich texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness that contrast with the soft spiced crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives lift. Stirring them vigorously knocks the air out, so fold gently until just combined to keep the cake light.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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

More spice cake recipes

Raisin 13Molasses 12Eggless 6Chocolate 5Golden 4Christmas 3 See all 307 →

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