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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake flavored with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, made with sour cream and baked in layers.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice 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. In a bowl, mix together the sour cream and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Cool the layers and assemble with boiled 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.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb, along with a mild tang.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter for a tender structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the layers additional lift.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding dry ingredients in stages and stirring until smooth keeps the batter evenly mixed and prevents lumps, while avoiding overmixing that can toughen the crumb once the flour is fully incorporated.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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