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Dessert

Spice Cakes

A baked cake made with brown sugar, sour milk, raisins, flour, butter, spices, baking soda, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Spice Cakes

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 Cakes

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

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix brown sugar, sour milk, and butter until well combined.

  2. Stir in raisins, flour, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, baking soda, and baking powder until just mixed.

  3. Pour batter into a greased baking pan.

  4. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Baking powder
Releases additional gas during baking to help the cake rise.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds moisture and a caramel note.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Stir only until just mixed. Overmixing flour develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense, and it can also knock out the gas produced by the leaveners.

Swap the clove

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

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

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