Skip to main content
Dessert

Sugar Cakes

A simple cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, salt, and optional caraway seeds, ginger, or currants.

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

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sugar Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Gradually add the flour and salt, mixing until combined.

  4. Stir in caraway seeds, ginger, or currants if desired.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes until lightly colored but thoroughly baked.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Caraway + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cakes a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creams with butter for a light structure and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cakes bake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually and mixing well after each one keeps the emulsion stable. A broken emulsion can make the batter curdle and bake up dense and uneven.

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, ginger, currant):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, ginger, currant. 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.

More sugar cakes recipes

Small 6Maple 3 See all 29 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes