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Dessert

White Cake

A simple white cake with sugar and butter batter, topped with a vanilla-flavored sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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White Cake

Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White 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

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour, milk, baking powder, almond, and lemon extracts, and mix well.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until fully incorporated.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make and finish the frosting

  1. For the frosting, combine 1 cup of sugar and 4 tablespoons of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it spins a thread.

  3. Beat the egg white to a stiff froth and gradually add the boiling sugar while continuing to beat for at least 5 minutes.

  4. Flavor the frosting with vanilla extract and spread it over the cooled cake.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's rise and shape as it bakes.
Eggs
Beaten whites add air and lift, helping the cake rise and set with a light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, tender batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps build a light texture.

The step that matters

Beating the boiling sugar into the egg white. The sugar syrup must reach the thread stage so it cooks the egg white as it is beaten in, giving a stable, stiff frosting. Adding it too cold or too slowly leaves the frosting loose and grainy, and beating for at least five minutes lets it cool and thicken.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg, almond, vanilla. 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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