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Dessert

Hickory-nut Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, eggs, sweet cream, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, flavorings, and hickory nuts, topped with a sweet cream filling.

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

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hickory-nut 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, eggs, sweet cream, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flavorings until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into jelly tins to make four layers.

  4. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. Bring the sweet thin cream to a boil.

  2. Dissolve cornstarch in a little milk and stir into the heated cream.

  3. Cook for a few minutes until thickened, then mix in the hickory nut meats.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the warm layers of cake and frost the top layer.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Forms the cake's structure once the batter is baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lift the layers as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda and helps give a tender crumb.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream into a smooth filling as it heats.
Hickory nut meats
Add nutty flavor and texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Dissolve cornstarch in a little milk before stirring it into the hot cream. Cornstarch clumps if added dry or directly to hot liquid. Dissolving it first in cold liquid lets the starch granules disperse evenly, so the cream thickens smoothly as it cooks and gelatinizes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cream, flour, nutmeg, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream, flour, nutmeg, meat. 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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