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Dessert

Spice Cake

A spiced cake with sugar, sour cream, eggs, flour, spices, nuts, raisins, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar and sour cream.

  3. Add eggs and baking soda, mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine flour, salt, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Fold in nuts, raisins, and ground chocolate.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in stages and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, egg, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice. 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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