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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake flavored with molasses, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, studded with raisins and walnuts.

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

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spice Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  3. Add the eggs, molasses, and sour milk; mix well.

  4. Stir in the raisins, walnuts, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure to the crumb as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweet flavor to the cake.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Checking for doneness. Baking time varies with pan and oven, so the cake can dry out if left too long. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean, showing the crumb has set without overbaking.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, molasses, milk, raisin, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, molasses, milk, raisin, 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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