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Dessert

Spice Cake

A baked cake made with fat, sugar, syrup, eggs, milk, spices, barley flour, raisins, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Spice Cake

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 ↓

Spice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the fat, sugar, and egg yolk together.

  2. Add the syrup and mix well.

  3. Alternately add the milk and the sifted dry ingredients.

  4. Fold in the raisins and the well-beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  2. After 20 minutes, raise the temperature to 400°F (200°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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

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

  5. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and, when beaten whites are folded in, add lift and a light crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Fat
Tenderizes the crumb and carries the spice flavours.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives the cake lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks the air out, and the batter then bakes denser and flatter.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup, egg, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, egg, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, clove. 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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