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Dessert

Fine Spongati Italian Cake

A honey and nut cake made with powdered bread, walnuts, currants, pine kernels, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fine Spongati Italian 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.

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Mix the powdered bread, chopped walnuts, currants, pine kernels, honey, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and nutmeg in a large bowl.

Make the dough

  1. In another bowl, combine the flour, butter, pounded sugar, olive oil, and salt.

  2. Add enough white wine to form a moderate consistency dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into round cases or crusts and fill with the mixture.

  2. Cover with more dough and prick the top with a knife.

  3. Let the cakes stand for a whole day.

  4. Place on floured plates and bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Walnut + pinetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together311 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pine + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Dried and powdered, it bulks out the filling and soaks up the honey.
Walnuts
Chopped nuts add body and a rich, toasty texture to the filling.
Virgin honey
Sweetens the filling and keeps it moist and sticky after baking.
Wheaten flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Currants
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts within the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the white wine to the dough. Too little wine leaves the dough stiff and crumbly, while too much makes it sticky and hard to shape. Aim for a moderate consistency so the cases hold the filling without tearing.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, walnut, pine, honey, cinnamon, clove, pepper):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, walnut, pine, honey, cinnamon, clove, pepper. 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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