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Dessert

Delicious Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Delicious Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  5. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the wet ingredients.

  6. Mix until smooth.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Cool in the pan before serving.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 helps the creamed mixture hold air for a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture when creamed with sugar.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and help bind the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Royal baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Adding flour in stages and mixing only until smooth keeps the batter from becoming overworked. Too much mixing develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

“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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