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 ↓
Walnut 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 bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the sweet milk and eggs, mixing well.
In a separate bowl, combine the cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour.
Chop the walnuts finely, reserving 16 halves, and sprinkle them with a little flour.
Stir the chopped walnuts into the batter.
Bake and finish
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.
Frost with white frosting and place the reserved walnut halves on top.
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 + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,873 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
- Walnuts
- Add crunch and nutty flavour throughout the cake.
The step that matters
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden. Baking soda and cream of tartar start producing gas as soon as they are mixed with liquid, so the batter should go into the oven promptly. Baking until golden sets the structure and browns the crust; underbaking can leave the centre collapsed and gummy.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg, cream, flour):
- Almondfits better
- Pistachiofits about as well
- Chestnutfits about as well
- Walnutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, cream, flour. 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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