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Dessert

Spice Cake

A moist cake flavored with cloves, chocolate, and raisins, topped with a sugared raisin filling.

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

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour, sour milk, baking soda, ground cloves, melted chocolate, eggs, and baking powder. Mix well.

  4. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans.

  5. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil 1½ cups of sugar and 5 tablespoons of water until it spins a thread.

  2. Stir the hot syrup into the beaten egg white.

  3. Mix half of the filling with ½ cup of seeded raisins.

Assemble

  1. Spread the raisin mixture between the cake layers.

  2. Frost the top and sides with the remaining filling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to add lift and a lighter texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Stir the hot syrup into the beaten egg white. The syrup must be boiled to the thread stage and poured in a thin stream while beating, because the hot sugar cooks the egg white into a stable, glossy frosting. Pouring too fast or too cool can leave it runny or grainy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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