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Dessert

Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with flour, butter, orange peel, spices, sugar, currants, baking soda, and buttermilk.

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

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  2. Whip the butter until creamy, then add it to the mixture.

  3. Add enough buttermilk to create a thick batter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb when creamed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas that lifts the batter.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity to hydrate the flour and activate the baking soda.

The step that matters

Adding enough buttermilk to create a thick batter. Flour needs enough liquid to hydrate and form structure, but too much buttermilk makes the batter loose, so the cake may sink or bake up dense and gummy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, orange, clove, cinnamon, pepper, sugar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, orange, clove, cinnamon, pepper, sugar. 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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