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Dessert

Favorite Spice Cake

A moist cake made with raisins, brown sugar, butter, sour milk, spices, and baked, topped with a simple sugar syrup and beaten egg white frosting.

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

Favorite 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sour milk, baking soda, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flour. Mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-35 minutes.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, cook the sugar with water until it threads from the spoon.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool.

  3. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks, then stir in the cooled syrup and desired flavor.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor when creamed with sugar.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the cake rises and stays moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas that makes the cake rise.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding that hold the cake together as it sets.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Cooking the frosting syrup. Sugar syrup must reach the right stage before it goes into the beaten egg white; if it is too cool or too hot, the frosting may stay runny or turn grainy and brittle. Letting it cool before adding it keeps the egg white from cooking or deflating.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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