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Dessert

A Very Good Lunch Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, sweet milk, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Very Good Lunch 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Beat the eggs separately.

Make the batter

  1. Add the yolks to the butter mixture.

  2. Mix the baking soda into the milk.

  3. Add the milk mixture to the batter.

  4. Add the flour mixed with cream of tartar.

  5. Alternate with the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into flat pans, filling them no more than 1½ inches deep.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes.

  3. Flavor with nutmeg, brandy, rose water, or grated lemon rind as desired.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while beaten whites add lift and structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts with baking soda to leaven the batter and adds a slight tang.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Alternate with the beaten egg whites. Folding whites in gently, rather than beating them into the batter, keeps the air bubbles intact so the cake rises light instead of collapsing or turning dense.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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