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Dessert

German Honey Cakes

A sweet cake made from honey, flour, butter, lemon peel, cloves, anise, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and anise share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 93 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

German Honey 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. Heat honey and butter together in a saucepan.

  2. Remove from heat and mix in the spices and baking soda dissolved in a little warm water.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out. If the dough is too runny, add more flour.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Clove + anisetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + anisetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + anisetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps keep the cakes soft.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it can be rolled out and hold its shape.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic honey to lift and lighten the cakes.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Honey is very moist, so flour must be added in small amounts until the dough is stiff enough to roll. Too much flour makes the cakes dry and tough, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, flour, butter, clove, anise):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, flour, butter, clove, anise. 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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