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Dessert

Butter Cakes

A simple butter cake made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, lemon zest, spices, flour, topped with almonds and candied orange peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Butter Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the butter and brown sugar.

  3. Add the eggs, lemon zest, cinnamon, and ginger; mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour until a paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  2. Sprinkle pounded almonds and candied orange-peel on top.

  3. Bake in the oven until golden brown.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the surface brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the dough sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the paste and shapes together while baking.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until a paste forms. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the dough's consistency. Too much flour makes it dry and stiff, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, lemon, cinnamon, flour, almond. 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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