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Dessert

Spanish Cake

A buttery, sweet cake flavored with nutmeg and orange rind, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Spanish Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Slowly add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Mix in the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder, flour, nutmeg, and orange rind.

  5. Add the dry mixture alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into baking sheets and bake until golden.

  2. Cover with caramel frosting once cooled.

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. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when creamed with butter, helps create a light crumb.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, and help bind the batter together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's shape as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it mixes evenly.

The step that matters

Add the dry mixture alternately with the milk. Alternating small additions keeps the batter smooth and emulsified. Overmixing flour develops gluten, which can make the cake tough.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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