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Dessert

Spice Cake

A sweet cake with raisins, spices, and a lemon-flavored icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour, sour milk, egg yolks, and whole egg.

  4. Mix in the baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg.

  5. Fold in the raisins.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour the batter into layers.

  2. Bake until done.

Make and spread the icing

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

  2. Beat the egg whites.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the egg whites while mixing continuously.

  4. Flavor the icing with lemon.

  5. Spread the icing over the cooled 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter and set the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and stay moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten and combined with hot syrup to create a light, airy icing.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and poured slowly while mixing constantly, so the whites cook gently and form a smooth, stable foam instead of scrambling or deflating.

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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