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Dessert

Butter Cakes

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, 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.

Make the batter

  1. Mix sugar and melted butter in a large bowl.

  2. Add beaten eggs and blend well.

  3. Stir in flour and milk until thoroughly combined.

Rise and top

  1. Spread the mixture thinly on buttered pans or baking dishes.

  2. Let the batter rise until sufficiently puffed.

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

Bake and serve

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

  2. 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 in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps the surface brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the surface brown during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until sufficiently puffed. The batter must trap air before baking, since the leavening gas expands in the oven. Underproofed batter bakes dense, while overproofed batter can collapse. Judging the puff by sight is what keeps the crumb light.

“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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