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Dessert

Neaponitan Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, corn starch, baking soda, cream of tartar, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Neaponitan 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix the corn starch and flour together.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and corn starch mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 whites
Beaten stiff, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb by diluting gluten, giving a finer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and browning.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites so they hold their volume during folding and baking.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air only when beaten stiff. Overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks out that air, so the cake bakes up dense 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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