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Dessert

New Haven Commencement Cake

A sweet yeast cake with nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, and citron, baked at 350°F.

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 ↓

New Haven Commencement 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. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the flour, yeast, grated nutmegs, cinnamon, and eggs, then mix well.

  3. Cover the bowl and let the mixture rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. In the morning, stir in the baking soda, chopped raisins, and chipped citron.

  2. Let the batter stand for 1 hour before baking.

  3. For added flavor, mix in a little raspberry vinegar or melted currant jelly.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  5. Once cooled, ice the cake as desired.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness when creamed with the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown in the oven.
Yeast
Leavens the batter during the overnight rise, giving it a lighter crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic batter to add lift and help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. Yeast needs time and a warm, covered bowl to raise the batter. Letting it rise fully before adding baking soda and fruit gives the cake its airy texture.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

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