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Dessert

Honey Cake

A baked cake made with honey, sugar, eggs, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Honey Cake

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Honey Cake

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 the honey

  1. Boil the honey, then let it cool in a dish.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sugar, egg yolks, and 5 egg whites to the honey and beat for 30 minutes.

  2. Fold in the flour and then beat the remaining 5 egg whites until stiff and add them to the mixture.

  3. Pour the batter into a buttered mold.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Honey + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, moisture and a deep flavor that keeps the cake tender.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help the batter set into a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiffness, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the remaining egg whites until stiff. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that makes the cake light. If they are under-whipped or deflated when folded in, the cake will be dense. Fold gently to keep the air.

“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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