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Dessert

Railroad Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, flour, eggs, butter, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and optional flavoring.

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 ↓

Railroad 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar and butter until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the milk.

  5. Add flavoring to taste and mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Add structure and richness as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as its starches set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, working with baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Alternating the dry ingredients with the milk. Adding dry ingredients in portions and alternating with the milk keeps the batter smooth and evenly hydrated. Adding everything at once or overmixing can develop too much gluten, making the cake dense or tough.

“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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