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Dessert

Breakfast Cake

A steamed cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Breakfast Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased steaming dish.

  2. Steam for 35 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Add structure and moisture, helping the batter set as it steams.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the moist batter, lifting the cake so it rises.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, more tender crumb.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and baking powder until smooth. Stirring flour develops gluten, which makes a cake tough and dense if overmixed. Mix only until the batter is smooth, then steam it promptly so the baking powder's rising power is not lost.

“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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