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Dessert

Chocolate Spice Cake

A moist chocolate cake flavored with cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chocolate 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and melted chocolate.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the wet mixture.

  5. Fold in the chopped pecans, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and vanilla.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let cool and frost with thick chocolate icing.

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

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

  2. Pecans + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Chocolate + pecanstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its gluten sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise and become light.
Chocolate
Adds rich flavor and deep color to the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture gradually. Mixing flour in gradually and stopping once combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, chocolate, 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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