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Dessert

On Dessert Cakes in General

A sweet cake made with suet, icing sugar, flour, essence, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

On Dessert Cakes in General

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mold

  1. Chop the suet finely and melt it in a small saucepan over low heat.

  2. Strain the melted suet through a sieve into a cake mold, coating the inside evenly.

  3. Drain excess grease and sprinkle icing sugar inside the mold to coat it.

  4. Prepare the mold with a stiff paper band around the top to prevent overflow.

Make and bake the batter

  1. Whisk the egg whites until firm and frothy.

  2. Mix the egg whites into the batter gently, adding the two flours gradually.

  3. Place the mold on a baking sheet with wood ashes and bake in a preheated moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  4. Keep the oven door closed while baking.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whisked until firm, they trap air and lighten the cake's texture.
Icing sugar
Coats the mold so the cake releases cleanly and adds a sweet, fine crust.
Flours
Provide the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whisked egg whites hold trapped air, and overmixing or deflating them while adding flour makes the cake dense and flat. Mix gently so the foam survives the bake.

“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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