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Dessert

Clove Cake

A sweet cake flavored with cloves, allspice, and cinnamon, containing raisins or currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Clove Cake

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Clove 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Mix the sour milk with the baking soda and add to the creamed mixture.

  3. Beat in the eggs.

  4. Stir in the raisins or currants, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating flour and holding air from creaming.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, leavening the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure as the cake bakes.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that gives the cake its body.

The step that matters

Mix the sour milk with the baking soda and add to the creamed mixture. Baking soda and acid react as soon as they meet, releasing gas bubbles. Adding the mixture promptly keeps those bubbles in the batter, so the cake rises well in the oven rather than losing lift while it waits.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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