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Dessert

Butter Honey Cakes

A sweet cake made with honey, butter, eggs, flour, cinnamon, and orange‑flower water, topped with an orange rind frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Butter Honey Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake batter

  1. Rub together the honey and butter.

  2. Add the unbeaten yolks of the eggs and beat thoroughly.

  3. Sift the flour with the cinnamon and salt, then add to the mixture along with the baking soda dissolved in the orange‑flower water.

  4. Beat the mixture thoroughly and fold in the well‑beaten egg whites.

Bake and frost

  1. Bake in shallow tins until golden brown.

  2. For frosting, mix the grated rind of 1 orange, 1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and 1 tablespoon orange juice.

  3. Allow the mixture to stand for an hour, then strain and add confectioners' sugar until thick enough to spread.

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 + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Honey + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Honey + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure, and whites folded in give the cake lightness.
Butter
Creamed with honey, it adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the honey and acid to help the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites hold air that makes the cake light. Stirring them in vigorously or over-mixing deflates that air, so the cake bakes up dense instead of tender.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, butter, egg, flour, cinnamon. 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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