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Dessert

Spice Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, lemon, spices, flour, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spice Cake

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 ↓

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the spices, beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and rind.

  3. Sift the baking powder and salt with part of the flour, then add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the milk and the remaining flour.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake until the cake pulls away from the sides.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Builds the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries the spice flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed, helps trap air for a lighter texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites add air that lifts the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture, loosening the batter and keeping the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Fold the stiffly beaten egg whites gently so the air they hold is not lost; the cake rises partly from that trapped air and the baking powder, so deflating it by overmixing makes the cake denser.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, cinnamon, flour, nutmeg, allspice. 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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