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 ↓
Old-fashioned Cup Cake
Ingredients
Directions
One cup of butter, one-half cup of milk, one and one-half cups sugar, three cups flour, three eggs beaten separately, two teaspoonfuls Star Crystal Baking powder, one saltspoonful mace, one-half teaspoonful extract lemon. Cream the butter and add sugar gradually, then the yolks of eggs, then the flavoring; sift the baking powder with the flour and add alternately with the milk, lastly beat in the whites. This is the foundation for almost all the butter cakes given previously. Use one-half the butter and scant the flour and it makes all the layer cake
HINTS ON CAKE MAKING. 37
mixtures. Color one-third the dough with spices and add one- half cup currants and chopped raisins, bake in jelly cake tins, placing the dark layer between the two white ones, fasten together with frosting and cover top and sides thickly with boiled frosting. Omit the milk and use six eggs and it is a rich loaf cake, etc. Mrs. Campbell.
Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)
Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1 cup (125g) all-purpose | 455 |
| Milk | 1 cup (244ml) whole | 149 |
| Butter | 1 tbsp (14g) | 102 |
| Egg | 1 large egg (50g) | 78 |
| Grape | 1/2 cup (76g) | 62 |
| Sugar | 1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated | 49 |
| Lemon | juice of 1 lemon (48ml) | 12 |
| Mace | not in our table | 0 |
One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.
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. See the original page.
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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Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,791 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Milk + flourtop 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).
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
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, sugar, flour, lemon, currant, egg):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Allspicefits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, flour, lemon, currant, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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