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Dessert

Mock Angel Food

A light, airy cake made with milk, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and egg whites, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Angel Food

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

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until it reaches boiling point.

  2. In a sifter, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt; sift together four times.

Make the batter

  1. Pour the boiling milk into the sifted mixture and stir until smooth.

  2. Carefully fold in the well-beaten egg whites until evenly incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into an ungreased baking tin and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air that gives the cake its light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the batter rise in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and helps form the batter.

The step that matters

Carefully fold in the egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring or deflating the foam makes the batter dense, and the cake will rise less and have a tougher crumb.

“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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