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Dessert

Jenny Lind Cakes

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, egg, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

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 ↓

Jenny Lind Cakes

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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sour milk and dissolved baking soda.

  4. Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and moisture as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour milk to release gas, leavening the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stir in the sour milk and dissolved baking soda. The baking soda must react with the acid in the sour milk while the batter is still mixing and before baking, so the gas it releases lifts the cake. Adding flour gradually keeps the batter stiff enough to hold that lift.

“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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