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Dessert

Dark Layer Cake

A moist cake made with brown sugar, butter, sour milk, eggs, spices, flour, baking soda, citron, raisins, nuts, orange extract, and boiled icing filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Dark Layer 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 the batter

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

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

  3. Add the sour milk and eggs, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the cinnamon, cloves, flour, and baking soda.

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

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.

  2. For the filling, mix the chopped citron, raisins, almonds or walnuts, and orange extract with boiled icing.

  3. Once the cake is cool, layer with the filling.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the cake its dark color and rich flavor.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds fat for a tender crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise and tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the cake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Overmixing once the flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough. Stir only until the flour is just combined.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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