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Dessert

Huckleberry Cake

A cake made with flour, huckleberries, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, spices, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Huckleberry Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, milk, spices, and salt to the mixture.

  4. Sift the baking powder through the flour and add part of it to the mixture.

  5. Fold in part of the beaten egg whites, then add the remaining flour and egg whites.

  6. Mix thoroughly and gently, then fold in the floured huckleberries.

Bake

  1. Grease the pans and pour in the batter about 1 inch thick.

  2. Dust the tops with sugar and bake for 30 to 45 minutes.

  3. This cake is better the day after baking.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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
Egg yolks enrich the batter and beaten whites add lift and a light, airy crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Huckleberries
Add tart fruit flavor and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites and huckleberries gently. Folding keeps the air beaten into the egg whites and the batter's trapped gas intact. Overmixing deflates the batter, producing a dense cake, and heavy fruit folded in too hard can sink or break up.

“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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