Name: White Cake
Ingredients: 2 egg whites; ½ cup soft butter; ½ cup milk; 1½ cups all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1 cup granulated sugar; Flavoring of choice; Icing of choice

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 ↓

White Cake

2 small layers

Ingredients

Directions

Break the whites of 2 eggs in a cup.
Add enough soft butter to the cup to make ½ cup, then fill the cup with milk.
Sift together 1½ cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and 1 cup of granulated sugar in a bowl.
Pour the wet mixture over the dry ingredients and beat for 10 minutes.
Add your choice of flavoring.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 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

Egg whites: Provide structure and lift to the batter as they set during baking.
Soft butter: Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavour.
All-purpose flour: Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Granulated sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps give a fine, tender crumb.

“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.