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Dessert

Spice Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, sour milk, eggs, baking soda, and spices such as cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the egg yolks and whole egg, mixing well.

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

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, alternating with the sour milk.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make and finish the icing

  1. For the icing, boil 4 cups of sugar with 2 cups of boiling water until it becomes very syrupy.

  2. Beat the 4 egg whites until stiff peaks form, then slowly pour the hot syrup over them while beating continuously.

  3. Flavor the icing with lemon, let it cool slightly, then spread it over the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and structure to the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to lift the batter and tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, moist texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg whites. Pouring the syrup slowly while beating continuously cooks the whites into a stable, glossy meringue. Pouring too fast or stopping the beating can leave the whites runny or deflated.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg, cinnamon, 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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