Skip to main content
Dessert

Sally White Cake

A buttery cake with citron, almonds, coconut, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sally White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 250°F (120°C).

  2. Flour all fruit well with extra flour.

  3. Line a steeple pan with three layers of brown paper and fill with batter.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well.

  3. Sift together flour, nutmeg, and mace, then add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the coconut, citron, and almonds gently.

Bake

  1. Place a shallow pan of boiling water in the oven to maintain moisture.

  2. Bake for 4 hours, covering the top with brown paper after 1½ hours to prevent over-browning.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they bind the batter and set during baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creams with the butter for aeration and adds sweetness and browning.
Citron
Adds bulk and chewy fruit texture throughout the cake.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour and a little fat to the crumb.

The step that matters

Bake for 4 hours with a water pan and a brown paper cover. A long, low bake sets a dense, fruit-filled batter without drying it out. The water pan keeps the oven humid, and the paper cover stops the top from over-browning before the centre is set.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour, nutmeg, sugar, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, nutmeg, sugar, vinegar, lemon. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes