Skip to main content
Dessert

Cinnamon Cake

A layered cinnamon cake with a frosted egg white glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cinnamon Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cinnamon 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 the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, molasses, butter or lard, sour milk, flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon until well combined.

  3. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites and gradually add sugar and cinnamon until smooth.

  2. Spread the frosting between the layers of the cake.

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

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a tender crumb.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep sweetness to the cake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to lift the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to form a light frosting that holds its shape between layers.

“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 cinnamon cake recipes

Almond 3Chocolate 3 See all 49 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipes