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Dessert

Honey Cakes

Honey cakes are a sweet pastry made with honey, brown sugar, baking soda, spices, citron, hickory nuts, almonds, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Honey Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Warm the honey in a large pot.

  2. Add the brown sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the citron and finely chopped hickory nuts and almonds.

  5. Warm the flour before gradually adding it to the mixture until it can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into small squares.

  2. Bake slowly in pans, ensuring they do not touch each other.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Honey + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake stay soft and hold together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavor to the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic honey to lighten the dough and promote browning.
Hickory nut meats
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor throughout the cake.
Shelled almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor, and contribute fat to the dough.

The step that matters

Bake slowly in pans, ensuring they do not touch each other.. Baking slowly at a gentle heat lets the dense, sugar-rich dough cook through without scorching the outside. Spacing the pieces apart lets heat circulate evenly and keeps them from fusing as they spread.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, sugar, cinnamon, meat, almond, flour):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, sugar, cinnamon, meat, almond, 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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