Skip to main content
Dessert

Jam Cake

A sweet cake made with jam, butter, flour, eggs, spices, and sour milk, topped with a simple sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Jam 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 cake batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the eggs and jam, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with sour milk.

Bake and make the icing

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, boil sugar and hot water together until it threads.

  3. Pour the hot mixture into the beaten egg whites and add vanilla, mixing until smooth.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as the batter bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the batter and give it lift.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and jam to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Jam
Adds sweetness, moisture, and fruit flavor to the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise and tenderize the crumb.

The step that matters

Alternating the dry ingredients with the sour milk. Adding the flour mixture in portions and alternating with the liquid keeps the batter smooth and emulsified and limits gluten development, which helps prevent a tough, dense cake.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg, cinnamon, milk, nutmeg. 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 jam cake recipes

Blackberry 36Strawberry 8Almond 3Raspberry 3 See all 52 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes