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Quick Cake

A simple quick cake made with sugar, baking powder, flour, butter, egg whites, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Quick 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.

Mix the batter

  1. Combine sugar, baking powder, and sifted flour in a bowl.

  2. Add melted butter and the egg whites on top.

  3. Fill a cup with sweet milk and pour the sweet milk into the mixture.

  4. Beat all ingredients together quickly and lightly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased tin.

  2. Bake immediately at 350°F (175°C).

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise and become light.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift, helping the cake set with an airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet, so waiting lets bubbles escape and weakens the rise. Baking promptly after mixing keeps the cake light.

“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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