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Dessert

To Make a Cake Without Butter

A cake made with eggs, sugar, almonds, orange‑flower water, 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: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Make a Cake Without Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs for 30 minutes.

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

  3. Mix in the pounded almonds, orange-flower water, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  4. Continue beating until the oven is ready.

  5. Just before placing in the oven, fold in the flour.

Bake

  1. Grease a cake pan with butter and bake 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped for a long time, they trap air that makes the cake light and rise.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped eggs so they hold their air.
Fine flour
Sets during baking to give the cake its structure.
Sweet almonds
Add richness and moisture, giving a tender crumb.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and fresh aroma from the rind and juice.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma that flavours the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour just before baking. Flour develops gluten when stirred, and overmixing or waiting too long lets the whipped egg foam collapse. Folding gently and putting the batter straight into the oven keeps the air bubbles intact, so the cake stays light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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