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Dessert

Huckleberry Cake

A buttery cake studded with huckleberries and spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, finished with chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Huckleberry 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 batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until light.

  2. Add the milk and the beaten yolks of the eggs, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking powder, rubbing the baking powder into the flour.

  5. Dust the huckleberries with flour and gently fold them into the batter without mashing.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into buttered pans, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Dust the tops with sugar and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  3. Ice with chocolate and fill with cream after baking.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and moisture, while whipped whites add lift and structure to the batter.
Sugar
Creams with butter for a light texture and adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become airy.
Huckleberries
Add moisture, tartness and fruity flavor, and their juice colors the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the huckleberries. Dusting the berries with flour helps keep them suspended, and gentle folding avoids crushing them, which would release juice, streak the batter and make the crumb heavy.

“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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