Skip to main content
Dessert

Sugar Cakes

A sweet cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, and topped with sugar, cinnamon, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sugar Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the raw eggs, butter, mashed hard-boiled eggs, and sugar until well combined.

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

  3. Roll out the dough and cut it into small round cakes.

Finish and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, stir a little sugar into one egg.

  2. Spread a portion of the egg mixture over each cake using a feather.

  3. Sprinkle the cakes with sugar, cinnamon, and chopped almonds.

  4. Bake the cakes in the preheated oven 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. 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Raw eggs
Bind the dough and set the cakes, giving them structure as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cakes a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled out and cut.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add moisture and richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Bake the cakes until golden. Sugar and egg proteins brown quickly in a hot oven, so the cakes can over-colour or burn if left too long. Pull them when golden, and only after the oven has fully preheated so they bake evenly.

“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.

More sugar cake recipes

Burnt 19Maple 16Brown 7Spiced Brown 5 See all 30 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipes