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Dessert

Honey Cakes

Honey cakes are sweet baked dough made with honey, powdered sugar, butter, citrus juice, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,746 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Honey 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine honey, powdered sugar, butter, orange or lemon juice, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms that can be rolled out easily.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to 1 inch thick using a rolling pin.

  2. Cut out shapes with a tumbler dipped in flour.

  3. Place the cutouts on buttered baking sheets.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until well done.

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. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Honey + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Honey + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

Strained honey
Provides the main sweetness and moisture, and helps the dough hold together.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine texture that dissolves easily into the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the baked cakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff, rollable dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the dough's stiffness. Too much flour at once can make the cakes dry and tough, while too little leaves a dough that is hard to roll and cut cleanly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, sugar, butter, nutmeg, 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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