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Dessert

Yolk Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, egg yolks, sugar, flour, milk, yeast, brandy, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Yolk Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks, then mix in the milk and flavorings.

  3. Sift the flour and yeast powder together, mixing as you sift.

Bake

  1. Make into one or two baking pans.

  2. Bake immediately.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Egg yolks
Add richness, colour and tenderness, and help bind the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Rumford's yeast powder
Chemical leavener that releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give a tender, moist crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Rumford's yeast powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is moistened and mixed into the batter. Waiting before baking lets that gas escape, so the cake may rise less and turn out flatter and denser.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, flour, milk, brandy, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour, milk, brandy, nutmeg. 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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