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Dessert

New Haven Commencement Cake

A sweet yeast cake with sugar, flour, eggs, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, citron, and optional raspberry vinegar or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

New Haven Commencement 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. In a large bowl, combine sugar, flour, eggs, butter, yeast, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  2. Cover and let the mixture rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. In the morning, add baking soda, chopped raisins, and chopped citron.

  2. Let the batter stand for 1 hour.

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

  4. Optionally, add raspberry vinegar or melted currant jelly before baking.

  5. Bake until golden.

  6. Ice the cake if desired.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, lightening the batter.
Baking soda
Adds extra lift and helps the cake brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. The yeast needs time to ferment the batter and build gas bubbles. Letting it rise fully before adding the leavening and baking gives the cake its light texture.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, egg, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

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