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Dessert

Sand Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, sour milk, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Sand Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Sand 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the sour milk.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. In a clean bowl, beat the egg white until stiff peaks form, then fold it into the batter.

Bake and finish

  1. Divide the batter into four greased cake pans.

  2. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. Let the layers cool before frosting with white frosting.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  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
Creamed with the sugar, it adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and structure to the batter.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, it lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise and tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, leavening the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg white. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a denser cake with less lift.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon, allspice. 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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