Skip to main content
Dessert

Spice Cake

A spiced cake with raisins, baked with eggs, butter, sour milk, and a sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

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 the cake

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until well combined. Add melted butter and sour milk, mixing thoroughly.

  3. In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, beat the reserved egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar, continuing to beat until glossy.

  2. Fold in the chopped raisins and spread over the cooled cake.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, moisture and tender texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth. Adding dry ingredients in portions and stopping once smooth keeps the batter from overmixing. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes