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Dessert

To Make a Cake ’without Butter

A cake made with eggs, powdered sugar, ground almonds, orange-flower water, lemon rind and juice, and warm dry flour, baked without butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately for half an hour.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat for another half hour.

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

  4. Continue beating until the oven is ready.

Bake

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

  2. Grease the pan with butter and bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

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 light, risen structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the beaten eggs hold their foam.
Sweet almonds
Add body, richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Warm dry fine flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the crumb as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour gently just before baking. Folding keeps the air beaten into the eggs; vigorous stirring or long waiting lets the foam collapse, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the orange

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

  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, 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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