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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake flavored with allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sour milk, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and vanilla extract; mix well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  6. Gradually add the flour and mix until smooth.

  7. Fold in the stoned raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for one hour.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour in the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper caramel-like flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and add it to the mixture.. Baking soda needs an acid, such as the sour milk, to release gas for rising. Dissolving it evenly in liquid helps it distribute through the batter so the cake rises uniformly rather than in patches.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger. 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.

More spice cake recipes

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