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Dessert

Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and a sugar‑egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spice 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 ↓

Spice 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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Beat in the eggs, reserving the whites of 2 eggs for icing.

  7. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans.

Bake and make the icing

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, boil 1 cup of sugar with 5 tablespoons of cold water until it threads.

  3. Remove from heat and add to the beaten egg whites, beating until cool and thick.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and their whites whip into the icing for a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it is mixed with liquid and heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb and browned surface.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps bind the batter together.

The step that matters

Adding the hot syrup to the egg whites. The sugar syrup must be cooked to the threading stage before it goes into the whites. Pouring it in while beating lets the hot syrup cook the whites into a stable, glossy foam that thickens as it cools.

“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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