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Dessert

Cake

A spiced cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, raisins and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the raisins.

  2. Cut the citron as desired.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light.

  2. Add the egg yolks and spices.

  3. Beat until very light.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a teaspoon of sour cream.

  5. Mix the dissolved baking soda into the batter.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites and the flour.

  7. Add the fruit.

Bake

  1. Bake in paper-lined pans.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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
Yolks add richness and structure, while separately beaten whites lighten the batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and mild acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Fruit
Adds sweetness, chewy texture and flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in a teaspoon of sour cream. Baking soda must be fully dissolved before mixing so it spreads evenly through the batter. Unevenly distributed soda can leave pockets of bitterness or uneven rising.

Swap the clove

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

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

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