Skip to main content
Dessert

Cheap Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with eggs, cocoa, sugar, nutmeg, flour, jam, baking powder, fat, milk, cordial, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Cheap 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.

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the spices in the cordial.

  2. Mix all ingredients as you would for any other cake, adding the jam last.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 to 45 minutes.

  2. Cool the cake in the pan inverted.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Fat
Adds tenderness and moisture to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Blackberry jam or strawberry jam
Adds moisture, fruity sweetness and flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the jam last. Folding the jam in at the end, after the batter is mixed, limits how long the jam is worked into the batter. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour and can make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, flour, blackberry, 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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesBlackberry JellyBlackberry Jelly34 recipesCoconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipes