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Dessert

Three-layer Cake Without an Egg

A three-layer cake made without eggs, using lard, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, cornstarch, and optionally jelly or icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Three-layer Cake Without an Egg

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the lard with the sugar until smooth.

  2. Heat the milk until the sugar is dissolved, then gradually stir it into the creamed mixture.

  3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and cornstarch, then beat it into the batter until stiff.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide the batter into three portions and bake each in a separate pan.

  2. Once baked, layer the cakes together with jelly or icing.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Lard
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and a fine, even crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with the fat.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and dissolves the sugar.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and become light.
Cornstarch
Softens the flour's protein so the crumb is more tender.

The step that matters

Beat the flour in until stiff. Overbeating once flour is added develops gluten and toughens the cake, while underbeating leaves pockets of dry flour. Sift first so the baking powder spreads evenly and the batter rises uniformly.

“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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