Name: Spice Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup brown sugar; ½ cup molasses; 1 cup buttermilk or sour milk; ⅓ cup shortening; 1 teaspoon baking soda; All kinds of spice (to taste)

Why it works: Sugar and buttermilk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Spice 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.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a mixing bowl, combine brown sugar, molasses, buttermilk, and shortening.
Add baking soda and spices, mixing well until smooth.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.
Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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.

Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,973 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Molasses: Adds deep flavor, dark color and moisture to the crumb.
Buttermilk: Adds acidity and moisture, and tenderness to the crumb.
Shortening: Adds fat for a tender texture and moist crumb.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the cake.

“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.