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Dessert

A Cake Without Butter

A simple cake made with flour, powdered sugar, eggs, caraway seeds or currants, yeast, milk, and water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Cake Without Butter

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. In a large bowl, mix the flour and powdered sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, caraway seeds (or currants), yeast, warm milk, and warm water, then mix all ingredients together until well combined.

Rise and bake

  1. Cover the bowl and let the mixture stand in a warm place to rise.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starch and protein set during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the batter rise before baking.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning in the oven.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter and helps the yeast activate.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to ferment and produce gas. If the batter is too cold, it will rise slowly or not at all, leaving a dense cake.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, milk. 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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