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Dessert

Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with sugar, butter, milk, spices, walnuts, and leavening agents.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spice Cake

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 ↓

Spice 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sour milk, sweet milk, and mix well.

Mix and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and walnuts.

  2. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  4. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Nutmeg + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps give the cake a light, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the leavening to help the cake rise and adds moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, so stirring only until just combined keeps the cake tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, butter, cinnamon, milk, clove, meat. 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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