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Dessert

Variety Cake

A layered spiced cake with raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

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

Variety 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Add the flour, eggs, and baking powder; mix until smooth.

  2. Take out one-third of the batter.

  3. To the reserved batter, add cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and raisins; mix well.

Bake and finish

  1. Layer the batters in a cake pan to create a three-layer cake.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  3. Cool and frost as desired.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat coating the flour.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise and become light.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the spiced layer.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and flavour to the spiced layer.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Underbaked layers stay wet in the centre and may collapse, while overbaking dries the crumb. A clean toothpick shows the starches have set and the moisture has mostly evaporated.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisin. 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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