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Dessert

Blackberry Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, buttermilk, baking soda, flour, blackberry jam, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Blackberry 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk and add to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add the flour, blackberry jam, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix until well combined.

Bake and assemble

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

  2. Let cool and use chocolate filling between layers.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Blackberry + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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 add richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Blackberry jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavor and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce gas; dissolving it fully in the buttermilk spreads the reaction evenly so the cake rises uniformly without pockets or a bitter, soapy taste.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, buttermilk, flour, blackberry, cinnamon. 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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