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Dessert

Lincoln Cake

A lard-based cake with sugar, flour, eggs, sour milk, spices, citron, rose water, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Lincoln Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the lard and sugar together.

  2. Add the whipped yolks of the eggs to the mixture.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and stir it into the milk.

  4. Add the milk mixture to the cake batter.

  5. Incorporate the spices, then the flour, followed by the rose water.

  6. Fold in the citron cut into slips and dredged in flour.

  7. Finally, add the beaten egg whites and stir well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a loaf or square, shallow baking pan.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten and folded in last, lighten its crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Sour milk or cream
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.
Lard
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add fat for a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed texture with the lard.

The step that matters

Finally, add the beaten egg whites and stir well.. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives lift. Stirring too vigorously at this point knocks that air out, so the whites should be gently incorporated until just combined.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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