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Dessert

Fine Spongati Italian Cake

A honey and nut spiced cake made with bread crumbs and flour, baked to a golden brown.

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the filling

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

Make the dough

  1. Combine the flour, butter, powdered sugar, olive oil, and salt in another bowl.

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

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into round cases and fill them with the mixture from the first bowl.

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

  3. Let the cakes rest for a whole day.

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

  5. Place the cakes on floured plates and bake until golden brown, about 30‑40 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.

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
Absorbs honey and soaks up moisture, giving the filling body rather than runniness.
Walnuts
Add richness and a firm, crunchy texture to the filling.
Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps the filling bind and stay soft.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown evenly.

The step that matters

Adding the white wine to the dough. Too little wine leaves the dough crumbly and hard to shape, while too much makes it sticky and tough. Adding it gradually until the dough is moderate keeps it workable and tender.

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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