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Dessert

Tea Cake

A sweet cake made with coconut butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, spices, lemon juice, and raisins.

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

Tea Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream coconut butter and sugar together.

  2. Add milk and mix well.

  3. Beat eggs until very light and add them to the mixture.

  4. Sift baking powder with flour and add alternately with egg mixture.

  5. Stir in cinnamon, cloves, lemon juice, and raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into a greased pan and bake at 350°F until browned.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Coconut + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together979 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Coconut + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten until light, they add structure and lift to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Coconut butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives the cake a tender texture.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and egg mixture alternately. Alternating small additions of flour and egg keeps the batter smooth and emulsified. Adding everything at once can cause lumps and a denser, uneven crumb.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

More tea cake recipes

English 7Blueberry 5Boston 3German 3Johnson 3Lemon 3 See all 116 →

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