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Dessert

Variety Cake

A spiced cake made with sugar, flour, sweet milk, butter, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Variety Cake

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 ↓

Variety 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  3. Add the cream of tartar to the flour.

  4. Combine the milk mixture with the flour mixture.

  5. Stir in the cinnamon, ground cloves, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans.

  2. Bake until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic component that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and add tenderness.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the crumb as the cake bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.

Swap the clove

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

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

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