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Dessert

Cider Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, flour, sugar, allspice, eggs, baking soda, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cider 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).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Sift the flour with the baking soda and allspice, then add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in enough cider to form a stiff batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow tin and bake until golden.

  2. Serve hot without frosting.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Allspice + cidertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together873 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter hold together as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown it while creaming gives air to the batter.
Cider
Supplies the liquid that moistens the flour and brings the batter to a stiff consistency.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, cider. 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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