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Dessert

Cake Without Eggs, Milk and Butter

A raisin cake made without eggs, milk, or butter, using lard and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cake Without Eggs, Milk and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the sugar, water, and lard together for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves.

  3. Let the mixture cool completely.

  4. Dissolve the salt and baking soda in a little warm water and add to the mixture.

  5. Sift the flour with baking powder.

  6. Mix the sifted flour into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a square tin.

  2. Place the tin in a cold oven.

  3. Turn on two burners.

  4. When the oven is hot, turn off one burner.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb stay soft.
Lard
Provides fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the cake moist.
Seeded raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acids to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, adding lift to the cake.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely. Adding the leavening to a still-hot mixture can make it react too quickly and lose lift, so cooling first gives a more even, controlled rise.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, flour. 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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