Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Corn Flour Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Butter a 1 lb cake tin.
Mix the Corn Flour and Paisley Flour together in a bowl.
Make the batter
Beat the butter until creamy, then add the sugar and mix well.
Break in the eggs and beat until combined.
Gently stir in the flour mixture until thoroughly mixed.
Add the grated lemon rind and mix.
Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin.
Bake and serve
Bake for 30 minutes.
Turn out and cool on a wire rack.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,927 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Brown & polson's patent corn flour
- Provides the main structure and body of the cake, with a light, tender crumb.
- Brown & polson's paisley flour
- Adds a fine, soft starch that helps give the cake a delicate texture.
- Butter
- Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavour through the cake.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
- Sifted sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown lightly while baking.
The step that matters
Beat the butter until creamy. Beating softened butter with sugar traps air in the fat, which helps the cake rise lightly and keeps its crumb tender. Under-beaten butter leaves a denser cake.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, flour, butter, egg, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, butter, egg, sugar. 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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