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Dessert

Spice Cake

A sweet cake made with brown sugar, molasses, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the brown sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the molasses, then the egg yolks, followed by the milk.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder and spices.

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

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and structure, helping the batter bind and set when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise and become light.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep colour and flavour to the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients. Adding the dry mix gradually lets it blend in evenly without overworking the batter. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

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