Skip to main content
Dessert

Golden Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, Karo syrup, flour, cornstarch, sour milk, baking soda, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Golden Spice Cake

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 ↓

Golden Spice 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 together the butter and brown sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks and whole egg, and beat until very light.

  3. Stir in the Karo Syrup, flour, cornstarch, and sour milk with dissolved baking soda.

  4. Add the ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger, grated nutmeg, and cayenne pepper. Beat thoroughly and pour into a baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and molasses flavor, and helps the cake brown.
Egg yolks
Add richness, emulsify the batter and give structure as they set.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to release gas and lift the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs until very light. Beating the egg yolks and whole egg until very light traps air in the batter, which helps give the cake lift before the baking soda and oven heat set its structure.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes