Skip to main content
Dessert

Huckleberry Cake

A sweet loaf cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, spices, and huckleberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking soda.

  4. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the batter.

  5. Gently fold in the huckleberries with a wooden spoon to avoid bruising.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until a straw inserted in the thickest part comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 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 and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten its crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Huckleberries
Add fruit moisture and bursts of flavor; flour dredging helps keep them suspended in the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the cake rise and brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the huckleberries. Folding gently with a wooden spoon keeps the batter airy from the whipped egg whites and avoids bruising the berries, which would release juice and streak the crumb.

“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 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes