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Dessert

Huckleberry Cakes

A cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, huckleberries, and optional spices.

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 ↓

Huckleberry Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the egg yolks and gradually stir in the sweet milk mixed with baking soda.

  3. Sift the flour with cream of tartar and add it to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  5. Gently fold in the huckleberries and spices if using.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Ice the cake with the remaining egg white.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give it lift as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Huckleberries
Add moisture, tartness and fruity flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense; fold gently and stop once no streaks remain.

“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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