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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, egg, molasses, sour milk, baking soda, flour, spices, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg, molasses, and baking soda dissolved in sour milk.

  3. Mix in the spices, flour, and raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and browning to the crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before adding it spreads the reaction evenly, so the cake rises uniformly rather than leaving bitter pockets or dense spots.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

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