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Dessert

Spice Cake

A baked loaf cake with butter, sugar, spices, sour milk, raisins, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spice Cake

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the sour milk and baking soda, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks and one egg white.

  4. Stir in the spices and flour gradually until combined.

  5. Fold in the dredged raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as it sets.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderise the crumb and brown the crust.

The step that matters

Stirring in the spices and flour gradually until combined. Overmixing flour develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense. Adding flour gradually and stopping once combined keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, sugar, allspice, egg, 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.

More spice cake recipes

Raisin 13Molasses 12Eggless 6Chocolate 5Golden 4Christmas 3 See all 307 →

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