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Dessert

Butter Cakes

A sweet baked cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, milk, and topped with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and almonds.

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

Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix sugar with melted butter.

  2. Add beaten eggs and blend with flour and milk.

  3. Thoroughly beat the mixture and spread it thinly on buttered pans.

  4. Let the mixture rise until sufficiently puffed.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the surface with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, and almonds.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  3. Serve hot for luncheon or tea.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and browns the surface when brushed on top.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a soft, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until sufficiently puffed. Rising traps gas in the batter, which gives the cake its lightness. Letting it rise too little leaves a dense result, while the batter should still be spread thinly so it bakes through evenly.

“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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