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Dessert

Sheridan Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, egg whites, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, sweet milk, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sheridan 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the sweet milk.

  2. Mix until smooth and add flavoring to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and helps the cake keep its airy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in alternation with liquid, rather than all at once, keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which can make the cake dense and tough.

“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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