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Dessert

Hayes Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, sour milk, flour, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Hayes 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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, stir the baking soda into the sour milk.

  4. Combine the sour milk mixture with the creamed mixture.

  5. Gradually add the flour and mix until smooth.

  6. Flavor with lemon extract to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a small dripping pan.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Cut into squares to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender while browning.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness and help bind the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas that makes the cake rise.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure as its proteins and starch set in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the baking soda into the sour milk and combine it promptly. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour milk right away, releasing gas bubbles. If the mixture sits too long before being added to the batter, some of that lift is lost, so the cake may rise less.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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