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Dessert

Spice Cake

A buttery, spiced cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Spice Cake

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 ↓

Spice Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and baking powder.

  3. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  4. Add the milk and essences, mixing to form a batter.

Bake

  1. Fill a greased cake tin or small patty pans with the batter.

  2. Bake for about 10 minutes or until golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Caraway + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Coats the flour particles, giving a tender, crumbly texture and rich flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the batter forms and keeps the cake moist.

The step that matters

Add the milk and essences, mixing to form a batter.. Once liquid meets flour, gluten starts to develop. Mixing only until the batter just comes together keeps the cake tender; overmixing makes it tough and dense.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, milk. 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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