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Dessert

Cheap Cake

A sweet cake made with coconut, citron, sugar, spices, and baking soda, baked into a soft dough.

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 ↓

Cheap Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil ¾ pint of water and add 3 pints of sugar; boil thoroughly.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in 2 grated coconut nuts and ½ pint of finely chopped citron.

Make the dough

  1. Mix 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, ⅓ teaspoon ground anise seed, and 1 teaspoon baking soda with enough flour to make a soft dough.

  2. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into cookie shapes or squares.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Cinnamon + anisetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Clove + anisetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Coconut + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together979 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Anise + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 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

Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, when boiled, forms a thick syrup that binds the coconut and citron.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chewy texture and coconut flavour to the dough.
Citron
Adds candied fruit flavour and pieces that give the cake chewy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift and lighten the dough as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a soft dough.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and water thoroughly. Boiling sugar to the right concentration builds the syrup that holds the mixture together. Undercooking leaves it too loose to form a dough, while the sugar's moisture content controls how the cookies set and brown.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, coconut, cinnamon, clove, anise, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coconut, cinnamon, clove, anise, 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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