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 ↓
Hickory Nut Layer 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.
Make the cake
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the sweet milk, eggs, and baking powder, mixing well.
Gradually add the flour until combined.
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.
Make the filling
For the filling, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup sweet cream, and 1 cup chopped nuts in a saucepan.
Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from heat and stir until nearly cool.
Spread the filling between the layers and on top of the cake.
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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,180 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
- Sweet cream
- Makes the filling rich and creamy, adding moisture and fat.
The step that matters
Boil the filling for exactly 5 minutes, then let it cool until nearly set. Boiling the sugar and cream concentrates the mixture and thickens it as it cools. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while stirring it while hot and cooling it too long can make it grainy or too stiff to spread.
Swap the nuts
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream):
- Almondfits better
- Pistachiofits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, 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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