Skip to main content
Dessert

Pound Cake

A simple sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pound 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 ↓

Pound 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  3. Stir in the flour until combined.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar together until very light.

  2. Mix the egg yolk mixture with the flour and butter mixture.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the batter.

  4. Add the lemon juice, lemon rind, and mace, and mix gently.

  5. Pour the batter into paper-lined pans.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Eggs
Egg whites hold air for lift, while yolks add richness and help bind the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds fat for a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when beaten with eggs, helps trap air for a light texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, while gentle folding keeps the batter light and airy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More pound cake recipes

White 28Coconut 27Ginger 27German 18Citron 17Molasses 17 See all 518 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes