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 ↓
Cream 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.
Add the egg whites (or whole eggs) and mix well.
Make the batter
In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder and flour.
Gradually add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture, alternating with the sweet milk. Mix until just combined.
Bake
Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden brown.
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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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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Flour + milktop 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).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give it a light, tender crumb.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
- Egg whites
- Provide structure and help the cake set as it bakes.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and helps the batter come together smoothly.
The step that matters
Mix until just combined. Once the flour is added, overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense. Stop mixing as soon as the flour disappears into 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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