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Dessert

Cake Raised with Powders

A light cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and raising powders.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cake Raised with Powders

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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the flour and mix thoroughly.

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

  4. Alternatively, omit the eggs and mix 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar into the flour.

  5. Just before baking, mix in 1 teaspoon of baking soda or dissolved sal volatile.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two loaf pans and bake immediately.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that form the cake's structure.
Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks add air and help the cake rise and set.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with the baking soda to produce gas and lift the batter.
Baking soda
Releases carbon dioxide when combined with the acid, leavening the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before baking. Baking soda and acid begin releasing gas as soon as they are wet. Delaying the bake lets that gas escape, so the cake may rise poorly. Baking immediately keeps the bubbles in the batter.

“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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