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Dessert

Hickory Nut Cakes

A buttery cake with hickory nuts, sweetened with sugar and lightly feathered with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cakes

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 dough

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

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out.

  4. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into small cakes.

Top and bake

  1. Beat a little milk into the remaining mixture and feather it over the top of each cake.

  2. Sprinkle sugar on top and cover with hickory nuts.

  3. 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. 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. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cakes set as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be stiff enough to roll and cut.
Milk
Thins the leftover mixture so it spreads as a glaze and promotes browning on top.
Hickory nuts
Add crunch and a nutty aroma to the topping.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out. Flour must be added gradually so the dough reaches a rollable stiffness without becoming tough. Adding too much at once, or overworking after the flour is in, develops gluten and produces a dense, hard cake.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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