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Dessert

Sour Milk Spice Cake

A spiced cake made with sour milk, butter, sugar, molasses, raisins, and spices, baked in greased and floured pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorghum and milk work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 55 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg and cream again.

  3. Stir in the sorghum molasses until well combined.

  4. Sift the flour and dry ingredients together three times.

  5. Add the dry mixture alternately with the sour milk to the batter.

  6. Beat the mixture hard for 2 minutes.

  7. Fold in the raisins that have been floured with additional flour.

Bake

  1. Bake in greased and floured pans.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sorghum + milktop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  4. Sorghum + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together30,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon share little aroma chemistry, yet 30,777 recipes mention both: they likely 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 sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Sorghum molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and a dark, caramel-like flavour.
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 produce gas that leavens the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dry mixture alternately with the sour milk. Alternating additions keep the batter emulsified and smooth, so gluten develops evenly and the cake bakes with a fine, uniform crumb rather than a dense or curdled texture.

“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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