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Dessert

Cakes Without Butter

A simple cake made with eggs, powdered sugar, flour, flavoring, and baking powder, without butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cakes Without Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs well, separating the yolks and whites.

  2. Mix the yolks with the powdered sugar until well combined.

  3. Let the mixture stand for one hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Add the flour and any desired flavoring.

  2. Chop the mixture into small cakes and place on tin plates.

  3. Sprinkle with Eagle Baking Powder before baking.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and their yolks bind the batter into a cohesive dough.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and tenderness while dissolving easily into the yolks.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as it sets during baking.
Eagle baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cakes rise and become lighter.

The step that matters

Sprinkle with Eagle Baking Powder before baking. Baking powder must be evenly distributed and get into the oven promptly, because its leavening gas is released with heat and moisture. Uneven or delayed mixing can leave dense spots or poor rise.

“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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