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Dessert

Blackberry Cake

A moist cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, blackberry jam or fresh berries, sour cream, baking soda, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blackberry 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs; beat the yolks well.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sour cream with the baking soda dissolved in it, then mix in the blackberry jam or mashed blackberries and spices.

  2. Gradually add the flour, then fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

  3. Pour the batter into a loaf pan or layer pans.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. If using layers, add icing flavored with lemon or vanilla between the layers.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Blackberry + allspicetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Eggs
Whites beaten until stiff add lift and an airy structure to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderizing the crumb and activating the baking soda.
Blackberry jam or fresh blackberries
Adds fruit flavor, moisture and sweetness to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that makes the cake light. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, cream, allspice, 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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