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Dessert

A Milkless, Eggless, Butterless Cake

A simple cake made without milk, eggs, or butter, using sugar, cinnamon, raisins, lard, and flour.

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

A Milkless, Eggless, Butterless 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. Boil the sugar, cinnamon, raisins, water, nutmeg, lard, salt, and cloves together for 3 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the baking soda dissolved in a little warm water.

  3. Add the sifted flour and baking powder, mixing until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Lard
Adds fat for a tender crumb and moist texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic mixture to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the cake additional lift.
Dark-brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper caramel-like flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the baking soda. Baking soda reacts quickly once dissolved, so the mixture should cool before it is added to avoid losing lift and to keep the batter from over-reacting.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, raisin, nutmeg, flour. 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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