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Dessert

Spice Cake

A sweet cake with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, milk, eggs, and a lemon‑scented syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Spice 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and 1 cup of sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour and baking powder, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the milk and egg yolks until combined.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold into the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. For the syrup, combine ½ cup sugar and ½ cup water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and add the 2 egg whites and juice of 1 lemon, stirring until smooth.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture while helping bind the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks and folded in, adding lift and an airy texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Overmixing or deflating them while folding makes the cake dense and flat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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