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Dessert

Spiced Sugar Cake

A spiced cake with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, spices, baking powder, and a boiled sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Spiced Sugar 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 cake

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

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk, flour, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and baking powder until combined.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing

  1. Boil the sugar and water until it threads.

  2. Add the cream of tartar.

  3. Pour it gradually over the beaten egg whites.

  4. Beat constantly until the icing is thick enough to spread.

  5. Add vanilla.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and emulsifying power that help bind the batter smoothly.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, causing the cake to rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter; in the icing it stabilises the whipped foam.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the batter. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact; vigorous stirring deflates them, leading to a denser, less risen cake.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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