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Dessert

Huckleberry Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, spices, baking powder, huckleberries, and topped with sugar.

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

Huckleberry 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.

Mix the batter

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

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light.

  3. Add the milk and the yolks of the eggs, mixing well.

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking powder, mixing thoroughly.

  6. Dust the huckleberries with flour and gently fold them into the batter without mashing.

Bake and rest

  1. Pour the batter into buttered pans, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Dust the tops with sugar and bake until golden.

  3. Let the cake sit overnight for better flavor.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten its crumb for structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, helps create a tender crumb, and browns the top.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Huckleberries
Add tart, juicy fruit pockets that moisten and flavor the crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the huckleberries. Folding gently, after dusting the berries with flour, keeps them suspended and prevents them sinking or bleeding color. Mashing them would release juice and make the crumb wet and streaked.

“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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