Skip to main content
Dessert

Rich Spice Cake

A moist cake flavored with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and nuts, baked with eggs, buttermilk, and brown sugar.

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

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 ↓

Rich 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

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

  2. In a bowl, cream the soft butter and brown sugar together.

  3. Add the whole eggs and egg yolks, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the buttermilk, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and nuts.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until smooth.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Let cool and ice with caramel icing.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper flavor to the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour. Once flour is added, gluten begins to form. Mixing until just smooth keeps the crumb tender, while overmixing makes the cake tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, buttermilk, sugar, cinnamon, butter, flour, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesButtermilk PieButtermilk Pie12 recipes