Name: Nut Cake
Ingredients: 1½ cups sugar; ½ cup butter; 2 cups flour; 3 eggs; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup chopped walnuts; ½ cup milk

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 ↓

Nut 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

Cream together the butter, sugar, and eggs.
Add the milk, then mix in the flour and dissolved baking soda.
Fold in the chopped walnuts.

Bake and finish

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 35 minutes.
Icing with yellow icing and decorate with walnuts.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 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 as the cake sets.
Flour: Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming adds air.
Baking soda: Reacts to lift the batter so the cake rises.
Walnuts: Add texture and a nutty flavour throughout the cake.

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Pistachiofits about as well
Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

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