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 ↓
Cheap Pound Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Melt the butter and lard together.
Work the melted mixture to a cream.
Add the sugar, eggs, flour, and milk, then mix everything well together.
Bake
Bake in a good oven until done.
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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- Adds rich flavour and a tender crumb through its fat content.
- Lard
- Adds fat that keeps the crumb soft and tender.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
- Self-raising flour
- Forms the cake's structure and, with its raising agent, helps it rise.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and set during baking to give structure.
- Milk
- Adds moisture that keeps the cake from drying out.
The step that matters
Work the melted mixture to a cream. Creaming beats air into the fat and sugar. Those air bubbles expand in the oven and lift the cake, so the mixture should be beaten until light and fluffy.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, milk. 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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