Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Berry Cake
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
Scald ½ lb. of farina in 2 quarts of boiling milk.
Add 1 lb. of sugar, 5 egg yolks, a little yolk alkaline, and flavoring to the milk and farina mixture.
Let the mixture rise.
Bake and serve
Pick and spread the berries over the cake.
Bake until light brown at 350°F (175°C).
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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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Farina
- Thickens the boiled milk into a starchy base that gives the cake its body.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help set the cake structure as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning in the oven.
- Fresh berries
- Add fruit flavor and moisture to the top of the cake.
The step that matters
Letting the mixture rise. The batter needs time to puff and loosen before baking; skipping or shortening this rise can leave the cake dense. Yolk alkaline also works best once it has had time to act on the batter.
“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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