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Dessert

Marlborough Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, and caraway seeds, beaten and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Marlborough Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs and strain them.

  2. Add the sugar and beat the mixture well for 30 minutes.

Mix and bake

  1. Stir in the flour and caraway seeds.

  2. Beat well for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into shallow tin pans.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Whipped and strained, they trap air that lifts the cake's structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, beaten with the eggs, helps build a light, fine texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's shape once baked.
Caraway seeds
Add a distinctive aromatic flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar. Beating the mixture for a long time incorporates air into the eggs, which expands in the oven and gives the cake its lightness. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the flour must be folded in gently so the air is not lost.

“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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