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Dessert

Spice Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, vinegar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, currants, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

  3. Add the vinegar, butter, and milk. Mix well.

  4. Combine the flour and baking powder in another bowl.

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

  6. Fold in the currants and raisins.

  7. Spice the batter with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg to your taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 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.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth batter with the flour.
Vinegar
Reacts with the leavening to help the cake rise and keeps the crumb tender.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour gradually and stirring only until smooth keeps lumps out and avoids overmixing, which would develop too much gluten and make the cake tough.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, butter, milk, flour, raisin, 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.

More spice cake recipes

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