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Dessert

Honey Cake

A sweet cake made with sour cream, flour, ginger, cinnamon, sugar, honey, baking soda, and hot water, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Honey Cake

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Honey Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Stir sour cream into flour.

  2. Add ground ginger, powdered cinnamon, sugar, and honey; mix thoroughly.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in a small amount of hot water and add to the mixture.

  4. Beat the mixture for a few minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve warm or cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + honeytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb and a slight tang.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour cream to lighten the batter as it bakes.
Honey
Adds sweetness, aroma, and moisture, and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Dissolve baking soda in a small amount of hot water and add to the mixture.. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it spreads evenly through the batter. Clumps can leave bitter pockets and uneven rising.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, cinnamon, sugar, honey, butter. 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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