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Dessert

Feather Cake

A spiced cake made with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, flour, milk, butter, eggs, and baking powder.

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

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 ↓

Feather Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the hot water to the creamed mixture and stir well.

  3. Incorporate the eggs (do not beat them) and mix in the milk.

  4. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and spices, then add to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, and help the cake hold its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Incorporate the eggs without beating them. Beating eggs in after the creamed mixture can add too much air and toughen the structure, so the cake may collapse or turn dense. Gently folding them in keeps the batter stable.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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