Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Breakfast 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.
In another bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, and sugar until well combined.
Melt the butter and add it to the wet ingredients.
Mix and bake
Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
Pour the batter into cups and bake until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidic component that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
- Milk
- Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the finished cake.
The step that matters
Mix until just combined. Once liquid meets flour, gluten starts to develop. Overmixing makes the cake tough and dense, so stir only until no dry flour streaks remain.
“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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