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Dessert

Hickory Nut Cake

A sweet cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, and chopped hickory nuts, topped with whole nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hickory Nut Cake

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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk.

  4. In another bowl, mix the flour and baking powder, then add to the wet mixture.

  5. Add the beaten eggs and stir until combined.

  6. Toss the chopped hickory nuts with ½ cup of flour, then fold into the batter.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Once baked, frost the top and decorate with reserved whole hickory nuts.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavor through the crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Hickory nut meats
Add nutty flavor and texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the chopped hickory nuts. Tossing the nuts with some flour helps them stay suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of the batter. Folding gently keeps the air from the creamed mixture and the rise from the baking powder intact.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, meat. 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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