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Dessert

Jam Cake

A sweet cake made with eggs, butter, flour, spices, jam, and a brown sugar butter filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Jam 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. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the sour cream, flour, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda until just combined.

  5. Gently fold in the jam last.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook the brown sugar and butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it forms a soft ball when dropped in cold water.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the sweet cream and vanilla.

  3. Beat until cool enough to spread between the cake layers.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the cake's crumb as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for lightness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and jam to lift the batter as it bakes.
Jam
Adds moisture, fruit sweetness and acidity to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the jam last. Folding gently keeps the batter's air and leavening intact, so the cake rises evenly instead of turning dense.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, cream, flour, allspice, 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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