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Dessert

Egoless Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, nutmeg, fat, raisins, flour, baking powder, buttermilk, cinnamon, allspice, orange and vanilla flavors.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Egoless 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, nutmeg, fat, and salt.

  2. Add the raisins and stir in the flour and baking powder.

  3. Dissolve the buttermilk in boiling water and add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the cinnamon, allspice, and flavors of orange and vanilla.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for about 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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 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
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderizing the crumb and helping the baking powder react.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake moist and tender while browning.
Fat
Coats flour particles to tenderize the crumb and carries flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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