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Dessert

Lincoln Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, sour cream, baking soda, spices, flour, rose water, citron, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Lincoln Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and sour cream.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little boiling water and stir it in.

  4. Mix in the nutmeg, cinnamon, and flour.

  5. Add the rose water and chopped citron.

  6. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into square pans and bake.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake richness and a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff and folded in, they trap air and give the cake lift and a light structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and emulsifying power that help bind the batter smoothly.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderizing the crumb and activating the baking soda.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing, so the cake bakes up light instead of dense.

“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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