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Dessert

Old Fashioned Sour Milk Cake

A simple cake made with sour milk, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Sour Milk Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar and 1 egg until well combined.

  3. Stir in ⅔ cup melted butter and ⅔ cup sour milk.

  4. Dissolve ½ teaspoon baking soda in the mixture and add nutmeg to taste.

  5. Sift in 2½ cups flour and ½ teaspoon baking powder, mixing until smooth.

Add the optional spices and bake

  1. Optional: add ½ cup molasses, a pinch of baking soda, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and ½ cup flour for a spiced cake.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake slowly until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking powder
Provides extra leavening so the cake rises further in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking at a low temperature sets the cake gently, so it rises evenly and dries out less. Check doneness with a toothpick, since a cake pulled too early can collapse or stay wet in the centre.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, milk, buttermilk, flour, molasses. 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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