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Directions for Making Spice Cakes

A spiced cake made with butter, blackberry jam, sugar, spices, sour milk, baking soda, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Directions for Making Spice Cakes

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 mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the blackberry jam and sour milk.

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

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

  7. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans.

Bake and finish

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

  2. Let the cakes cool before icing with seafoam 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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. Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
Blackberry jam
Adds moisture, fruity sweetness, and depth of flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender. Overmixing after the flour goes in creates a tough, dense crumb.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

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