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Cardamom-Spiced Carrot Cake with Whipped Cream-Cheese Frosting Recipe

Have your cake and eat your veggies too, with this moist, nicely spiced carrot cake. It's flavorful enough on its own, but topped with Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting...

By chow · From Open Recipes · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardamom and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 155 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

1 double-layer 8-inch cake (10 to 12 servings)

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By chow. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cardamom + carrottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cardamom + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cardamom + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Ginger + carrottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the vanilla

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

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  3. Orangeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Vanillathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, egg, sugar, buttermilk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).