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Dessert

Jam Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, spices, butter, eggs, jam, and sour milk.

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

Jam Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt.

Make the batter

  1. Alternately add the flour mixture and sour milk to the butter mixture in thirds, starting and ending with the flour.

  2. Fold in the jam gently.

  3. Spoon the batter into prepared tins.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + blackberrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Allspice + blackberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated creamed base.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Alternately add the flour mixture and sour milk in thirds. Adding the dry and liquid ingredients in portions, starting and ending with flour, lets the batter combine evenly without overmixing. Overmixing develops gluten, which can toughen the cake and make it dense.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

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