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Dessert

Good Luck Nut Cake

A nut cake made with margarine, sugar, vanilla, walnuts, flour, baking powder, eggs, and milk, baked in a tube pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Good Luck Nut Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the margarine until creamy.

  3. Stir in the sugar, salt, vanilla, and egg yolks.

  4. In another bowl, mix the walnuts, flour, and baking powder.

Make the batter

  1. Add the dry mixture alternately with the milk to the creamed mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a tube pan and bake for about 45 minutes.

  2. Once baked, cover with boiled or confectioner's frosting.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Margarine
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender while creaming.
Walnuts
Add texture and a nutty flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that makes the cake light. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vanilla, milk, egg, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, milk, egg, 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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