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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, butter, egg, sour milk, baking soda, flour, raisins, spices, and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spice 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 ↓

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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the egg.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the flour, raisins, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. If desired, fold in chopped nuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan.

  2. Bake for about 50-60 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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce the gas that lifts the cake. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before adding it spreads the reaction evenly, so the cake rises without uneven pockets or a soapy, bitter taste.

Swap the clove

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

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

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