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Dessert

Jam Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, eggs, jam, flour, sugar, baking soda, sour milk, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Jam 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 the batter

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

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

  3. Add the eggs and jam, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, spices, and nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the sour milk.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let cool and spread with boiled frosting.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Jam
Adds moisture and fruity sweetness to the cake.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Alternating dry ingredients with sour milk. Adding the flour mixture gradually and alternating with the liquid keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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