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Dessert

Spiced Mountain Cake

A spiced cake made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg whites, flour and baking powder, topped with a powdered sugar icing.

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

Spiced Mountain 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the beaten egg yolks, sugar, butter, sweet milk, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg whites, flour, and baking powder until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool and ice

  1. Let the cakes cool completely.

  2. For the icing, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar until smooth.

  3. Spread the icing between the layers of the cooled cakes.

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. 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and structure to the batter as they bind with the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Egg whites
Add lift and airiness to the batter, and form the stiff base of the icing.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, dissolved into beaten whites, gives the icing its smooth body.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the icing. Whites must be beaten until stiff before the sugar is added gradually; under-beaten whites stay runny and won't hold the icing, while adding sugar too fast can deflate the foam.

“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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