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Dessert

Angel Cakes

A light, airy cake made with sugar, flour, cream of tartar, corn starch, 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 cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Angel 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix and sift together the sugar, flour, and cream of tartar.

  3. Do not grease the angel cake pans; instead, dip them in water and fill while damp.

Make and bake

  1. Add the sifted mixture to the stiffly beaten egg whites and fold gently.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until done.

  3. Immediately turn the pans upside down after removing from the oven; place a match under one side to let steam escape.

Finish

  1. Once cool, remove the cakes from the pans and ice with water icing, fondant, or egg white icing.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Whipped into a foam that gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the batter's structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's airy crumb once baked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping the foam stay stable and hold its volume.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving the cake a tender, delicate crumb.

The step that matters

Inverting the pans immediately after baking. The hot, delicate egg-white structure is still setting and can collapse as it cools. Turning the pans upside down while the cake is hot lets it cool stretched, keeping its height and light texture.

“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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