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Dessert

Honey U:b Cakes

A sweet cake made with almonds, citron, honey, molasses, butter, flour, water, baking soda, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Honey U:b Cakes

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the chopped almonds, chopped citron, sugar, molasses, butter, honey, flour, water, baking soda, and eggs until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan, spreading it evenly.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 30‑40 minutes.

Make the icing

  1. For icing, cook 5 lbs of sugar with 1 qt of water until it reaches the desired consistency.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + honeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavor through the batter.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Honey and molasses brown faster than plain batter because their sugars caramelize, so the outside can look done while the dense centre is still underbaked.

“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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