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Dessert

Butter Cakis

A buttery cake with lemon, vanilla, and almond topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Butter Cakis

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add raw egg yolks, egg white, grated hard-boiled yolks, lemon rind, lemon juice, and vanilla extract, and mix well.

  3. Gradually add sifted flour and mix until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into cake shapes.

  2. Spread the tops of each cake with beaten egg white.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped almonds mixed with sugar.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Sugar
Creaming with butter aerates the batter and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and emulsifying power that help bind the dough.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the proteins bake.
Egg white
Brushed on top, it helps the surface brown and gives a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Adding flour slowly and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, flour, almond. 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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