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Dessert

Fine Spongati Italian Cake

A honey and nut spiced cake made with dried 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 and fill the dough

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

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

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

  4. Cover with more dough and prick the tops with a knife.

Rest and bake

  1. Let the cakes stand for a whole day.

  2. Place them on floured plates and bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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

Wheaten flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
White bread
Dried and powdered, it absorbs honey and gives the filling body.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps bind the filling together.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb in the dough.
Walnuts
Provide chopped texture and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Let the cakes stand for a whole day. Resting lets the dough relax and the filling's moisture distribute evenly, so the cakes hold together and bake more evenly. Skipping the rest can leave the dough tight and the filling uneven.

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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