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Dessert

Jam Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices, sour milk, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Jam Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks and cream again.

  3. Sift all dry ingredients together three times and add to the creamed mixture along with the sour milk and jam.

  4. Beat the mixture hard for 3 minutes.

Finish and bake

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites last.

  2. Bake in greased and flour-dusted 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 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake up as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat in the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.
Jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavor and moisture to the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites last. Whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring vigorously would deflate the foam and produce a denser cake.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

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