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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light cake made with cream of tartar, flour, cornstarch, baking soda, sweet milk, sugar, butter, egg whites, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Delicate Cake

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Delicate 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the cream of tartar with the flour and cornstarch.

  3. In another bowl, combine the baking soda with the sweet milk.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the milk mixture to the sugar and butter, then gradually add the flour mixture.

  3. Fold in the egg whites and add flavoring to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Egg whites
Whipped air and structure that lift the batter and set as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and gives a tender, fine crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas for rising.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb, giving a more delicate, tender texture than flour alone.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only if they are not deflated. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps the trapped air in the batter so the cake rises and stays light.

“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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