Skip to main content
Dessert

Pound Cake

A sweet cake made with equal parts flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and spices, baked at 350°F for 2–3 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pound Cake

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 ↓

Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix cinnamon, mace, and grated nutmegs with brandy and rose water in a bowl.

  2. Sift flour into a large bowl and add sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Cut butter into pieces and warm until soft, then cream with sugar and flour mixture.

  2. Gradually add the spice mixture to the creamed mixture.

  3. Beat eggs until frothy, then stir them in alternately with the flour mixture.

  4. Add lemon oil and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour into a deep tin pan with straight sides.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 to 3 hours.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and lift, setting the crumb as the cake bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, butter traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
All-purpose flour
Flour provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
White sugar
Sugar adds sweetness, helps tenderize the crumb, and aids browning.

The step that matters

Creaming butter and sugar, then adding eggs alternately with flour. Creaming works air into the butter and sugar, which gives lift. Adding eggs slowly and alternating with flour keeps the batter stable so it does not curdle or deflate, which would make a dense cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, nutmeg, brandy, rose, flour, sugar, butter. 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.

More pound cake recipes

White 28Coconut 27Ginger 27German 18Citron 17Molasses 17 See all 518 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes