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Dessert

Velvet Cake

A light, airy cake made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, water, flour, corn starch, baking powder, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Velvet Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix until well combined.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and cold water, mixing thoroughly.

  4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, corn starch, and baking powder.

  5. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture along with the beaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake until done.

  2. Cover with opera caramel frosting before serving.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb through fat.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it soft and moist.
Egg yolks
Add richness, emulsify the batter and help set the structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure as its proteins set during baking.
Egg whites
Whipped air lightens the batter and helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates them, leaving a dense, flat cake. Fold gently just until no white 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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