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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, sour milk, spices, and eggs, topped with a stiff-egg-white frosting.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Spice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare and mix

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the molasses and sour milk with the baking soda.

Make the batter

  1. Add the egg yolks, flour, cinnamon, and mixed spices; stir until combined.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form for frosting.

  3. Pour the batter into two-layer cake pans or a small loaf pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark color and flavor of the cake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda and keeps the crumb tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to release gas that lifts the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that sets around the air and gas as the cake bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air to give the frosting its light, airy body.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites beaten past stiff peaks turn dry and grainy and lose their ability to hold air, so the frosting becomes dense and may weep.

“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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