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Dessert

Cranberry Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, sour milk, flour, baking soda, baking powder, cranberry jelly, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cranberry 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sour milk, baking soda, and baking powder; mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour, mixing until combined.

  4. Stir in the cranberry jelly or jam and spices.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide the batter into two layers and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Use a white filling between the layers and add cranberries last.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cranberry + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated batter when creamed with butter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release carbon dioxide for lift and browning.
Baking powder
Provides additional leavening so the layers rise evenly in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Checking doneness with a toothpick. The cranberry jelly or jam adds moisture and sugar, so the centre can look set while still being underbaked. Testing until a toothpick comes out clean confirms the layers have set through.

Swap the cranberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, flour, cinnamon, clove, allspice):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, cinnamon, clove, 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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