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Dessert

Spiced Cake

A spiced cake made with risen dough, eggs, butter, sugar, spices, raisins, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Spiced Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the risen dough with the egg yolks and beaten egg whites.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and floured raisins.

  3. Sift in enough flour to create a good batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into pans and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Risen dough
Provides the leavened, yeasted base that gives the cake its light, open crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness; beaten whites help trap air and lift the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and promotes gentle browning in the oven.
Stoned raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the batter stand before baking. Resting the batter in the pans for 30 minutes lets the yeasted dough rise again before the heat sets the structure. Skipping or shortening the rest can leave the cake dense.

Swap the clove

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

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

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