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Dessert

Holiday Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, corn starch, baking soda, cream of tartar, sweet milk, egg whites, and flavored with essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Holiday 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 the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the corn starch, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, sweet milk, and essence. Mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into greased 12x8 inch pans.

Bake and assemble

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

  2. For the frosting, beat together the fine sugar, egg whites, and essence until smooth.

  3. Layer the cooled cakes with frosting in between.

  4. Trim the edges and cut the cake into 4x3 inch pieces.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the cake a light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Creams with butter for aeration and adds sweetness and browning to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping stabilize the whipped egg whites and react with baking soda.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the batter. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leading to a dense, flat crumb. Fold gently until just combined.

“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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