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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake made with brown and white sugar, butter, spices, flour, baking powder, milk, and raisins.

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 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 ↓

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. Sift the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the butter, sugars, milk, and spices to the dry ingredients and mix well.

  3. Dredge the raisins in flour before adding them to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into muffin tins or a loaf pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper molasses flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture to form the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredge the raisins in flour before adding them to the mixture.. Flour-coated raisins are less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter, so they stay distributed through the cake as it bakes.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, flour, milk. 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.

More spice cake recipes

Raisin 13Molasses 12Eggless 6Chocolate 5Golden 4Christmas 3 See all 307 →

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