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Honey Cakes

A sweet cake made with molasses, honey, rye flour, eggs, spices, nuts, and wheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

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.

Prepare

  1. Stir the chopped nuts into a portion of the rye flour.

  2. Mix the molasses, baking soda, honey, rye flour, eggs, and spices in the order given.

  3. Add enough wheat flour to form a dough that can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into oblong pieces.

  2. 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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Honey + wheattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Rye + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  5. Nuts + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides dark sweetness, moisture and a rich, deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic honey and molasses to lift and lighten the dough.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the cakes stay soft.
Rye flour
Forms the structure of the dough and gives a characteristic earthy flavor.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.

The step that matters

Adding the wheat flour. Wheat flour contains gluten-forming proteins that give the dough enough elasticity to roll out. Adding too much makes the cakes dense and tough, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to shape.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, honey, rye, flour, egg, wheat):

  1. Flaxseedfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, honey, rye, flour, egg, wheat. 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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