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Dessert

Huckleberry Spider-cake

A cake made with huckleberries, flour, butter, and sweet milk, cooked on an iron spider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Huckleberry Spider-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Pick over and wash the huckleberries in cold water, then drain them dry and dust with flour.

  2. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Chop the butter into the flour mixture and add the huckleberries.

  4. Mix in enough sweet milk to form a soft dough.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat an iron spider over a moderate fire and add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Place the dough in the spider, making the cake about ¾ inch thick.

  3. Bake slowly for about 10 minutes on each side, shaking and turning to prevent burning.

  4. Check for doneness before serving hot with plenty of butter.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Huckleberries
Provide the fruit and bursts of tart flavor throughout the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the cake together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps brown the cake in the pan.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the cake rises and stays light.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour into a soft dough and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Cooking the cake over a slow, moderate fire. Baking slowly lets the centre cook through before the outside burns. Shaking and turning the cake spreads heat evenly, which prevents scorching while the sugars in the berries caramelise.

“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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