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Dessert

National Cake

A layered cake with white, blue, and red batters, each made from sugar, butter, milk, egg whites, flour, and leavening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 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 ↓

National Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batters

  1. Cream together 1 cup white sugar and ½ cup butter.

  2. Add ½ cup sweet milk, beaten egg whites, ½ cup corn starch, and 1 cup flour mixed with 1 teaspoon cream of tartar and ½ teaspoon baking soda.

  3. Flavor with lemon extract.

  4. For the blue part, cream together 1 cup blue sugar and ½ cup butter.

  5. Add ½ cup sweet milk, beaten egg whites, and 2 cups flour mixed with 1 teaspoon cream of tartar and ½ teaspoon baking soda.

  6. For the red part, cream together 1 cup red sugar and ½ cup butter.

  7. Add ½ cup sweet milk, beaten egg whites, and 2 cups flour mixed with 1 teaspoon cream of tartar and ½ teaspoon baking soda.

Layer and bake

  1. In a cake pan, layer the red, then the white, and finally the blue batter.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°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.

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. Milk + corntop 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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cake brown and stay moist.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the whipped egg whites, supporting lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Layering the red, white and blue batters. Batters of different colors can mix into each other if poured carelessly, blurring the layers. Pour each batter gently and in the stated order so the colored sections stay distinct as the cake bakes.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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