Skip to main content
Bread

Corn-Starch Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, egg whites, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, baking soda, corn starch, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Corn-Starch 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and stir well.

  4. Mix in the sweet milk.

Mix the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  3. Flavor with lemon and stir in the corn-starch.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-40 minutes.

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
Whipped or beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Corn-starch
Softens the crumb and makes the cake more tender than flour alone would.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, browned crust.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding dry ingredients slowly and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing, which would toughen the cake and knock out the air trapped in the whites.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes