Skip to main content
Dessert

Old Fashioned Sweet Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sugar, cinnamon, eggs, soda, water, and topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Old Fashioned Sweet Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub together the flour, butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

  3. Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl.

  4. Dissolve the bread soda in a little milk.

Make the dough

  1. Combine the dry mixture with the eggs and dissolved soda, adding enough water to form a paste.

  2. Roll out the paste on a floured surface to about ½ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into shapes and place half an almond on each cake.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cakes a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface turn golden as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure.
Bread soda
Releases gas as it reacts, helping the cakes rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Adding water to form the paste. Water is added gradually until the dough just holds together. Too little leaves it crumbly and hard to roll, while too much makes it sticky and dense, so the cakes bake unevenly.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes