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Dessert

Angel Cake

A light, airy cake made from beaten egg whites, flour, sugar, and flavoring, baked in a tube pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Angel Cake

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Angel 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

  1. Sift the flour and cream of tartar five times.

  2. Sift the sugar twice.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  4. Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites.

  5. Fold in the flour.

  6. Add the extract.

  7. Line the bottom of an ungreased tube pan with paper.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Invert the pan.

  3. Let it stand until cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 whites trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so the foam holds its volume.
All-purpose flour
Provides gentle structure so the cake sets without collapsing.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring or deflating the foam makes the cake dense and flat instead of light.

“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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