Skip to main content
Dessert

Penny Spice Cake

A moist molasses-based spice cake made with stale bread, flour, lard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Penny Spice 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 batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, water, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the crumbled stale cake or bread and stir until incorporated.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, ginger, allspice, and cinnamon.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Melt the lard and fold it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark colour and a moist, rich flavour to the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Stale cake or bread
Adds body and moisture to the crumb, helping the cake stay tender.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a moist texture in the finished cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the dry ingredients. Adding the dry mix gradually and stirring only until smooth keeps the batter even. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, sugar, bread, flour, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, bread, flour, allspice, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Soft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesGingerbreadGingerbread25 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes