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Dessert

Holiday Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, corn starch, flour, baking soda, sweet milk, egg whites, and essence, topped with a sugar‑egg‑white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Holiday Cake

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.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter using a large spoon.

  3. Add corn starch, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, sweet milk, and essence. Mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into two 12‑inch by 8‑inch pans lined with tin.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  2. For the frosting, beat together the fine sifted sugar, egg whites, and essence until smooth.

  3. Layer the cakes with frosting in between and on top.

  4. Once cooled, trim the edges and cut into 4‑inch by 3‑inch pieces.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Egg whites
Whipped until stiff and folded in to lighten the batter and give structure as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, activating the baking soda and stabilising the whipped egg whites.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb and lightens the texture by diluting the flour's gluten.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Overmixing or deflating them while folding presses out that air, leaving a dense, flat cake.

“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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