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Dessert

Spiced Cake

A moist cake made with raisins, cinnamon, cloves, sour milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Spiced Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately quick oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Sift and coarsely chop the raisins, then lightly flour them.

  5. Sift the spices with the remaining flour and stir into the mixture.

  6. Finally, add the floured raisins and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and a rich texture to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter and lightens the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before adding it to the batter spreads the reaction evenly, so the cake rises uniformly rather than developing dense or bitter patches.

Swap the clove

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

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

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