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Dessert

Pyramid Pound Cake

A pound cake baked in a pyramid shape, cut into squares and frosted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Pyramid Pound 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).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the sugar and flour together.

  3. Add the eggs and beat until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a dripping pan, ensuring it is no more than 1 inch thick.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let the cake cool completely before cutting it into 4-inch squares.

Frost and assemble

  1. Frost the top and sides of each square.

  2. Arrange the squares on a cake stand in a pyramid shape before the icing dries.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter, add moisture and structure, and help it rise.

The step that matters

Let the cake cool completely before cutting it into 4-inch squares.. A warm cake is soft and crumbles when cut. Cooling lets the crumb set so the squares keep their shape and the icing stays on.

“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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