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Dessert

Fine Spongati Italian Cake

A spongy Italian cake made with bread crumbs, nuts, currants, honey, spices, and a wine‑dough shell.

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

  2. In another bowl, combine the flour, butter, powdered sugar, olive oil, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add enough white wine to the flour mixture to form a moderate consistency dough.

Shape and rest

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

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

  3. Let the cakes stand for a whole day.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and place the cakes on floured plates.

  2. Bake until the cakes are an inch thick, then 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 + 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

Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps the filling hold together as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough structure that encloses the filling and holds the cake's shape.
Walnuts
Add bulk, texture and fat to the filling.
White bread
Dried and ground, it absorbs moisture and gives the filling body.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the dough.

The step that matters

Bake until the cakes are an inch thick. Thickness sets how far heat must travel to cook the filling through, so the cake can look browned while its center is still underdone. Checking thickness rather than relying only on colour helps the centre set properly.

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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