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Dessert

Spiced Drop Cakes

A sweet drop cake with brown sugar, butter, eggs, flour, raisins, nuts, and spices baked at 350°F.

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

Spiced Drop 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour and baking soda mixture.

  5. Fold in the raisins, chopped nuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cakes brown and stay soft.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as the batter sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the cakes rise and encourages browning.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda must be fully dissolved in warm water before it goes in, so it mixes evenly. Clumps can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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