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Dessert

To Make a Cake Without Butter

A cake made with eggs, sugar, ground almonds, lemon, and flour, baked without butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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To Make a Cake Without Butter

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 ↓

To Make a Cake Without Butter

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs for 30 minutes.

  2. Gradually add the sifted sugar and beat for another 30 minutes.

  3. Mix in the ground almonds, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  4. Continue beating until the oven is ready.

Bake

  1. Just before baking, fold in the warm flour.

  2. Grease a cake pan with butter.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Whipped to trap air, giving the cake its structure and rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped eggs.
Sweet almonds
Add body, moisture and a rich nutty flavor.
Lemon
Adds aroma and bright acidity to the batter.
Fine flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the cake's crumb during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the warm flour. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs. Overmixing deflates the batter, which can leave a dense, flat cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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