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Dessert

Cake That Cannot Fail

A simple cake made with sugar, flour, butter, eggs, sweet cream, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cake That Cannot Fail

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the sweet cream.

  4. Sift the cream of tartar into the flour and gradually add it to the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into pans or cups and bake 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with the baking soda to help the cake rise and brown.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Dissolving and adding the baking soda. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and mixed in evenly so it reacts with the acid and leavens the batter consistently. Lumps or uneven mixing can leave pockets that are bitter or cause uneven rising.

“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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