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Dessert

White Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Cake

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Keep ½ cup of sugar aside to stir with the egg whites.

  2. Sift the flour four times, then set aside 1 cup to sift with the baking powder.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk and 2 cups of flour, and beat thoroughly.

  3. Mix in the remaining cup of flour and the baking powder.

  4. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites with the reserved sugar.

  5. Flavor with extract to taste.

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.

  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. 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).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to add lightness and structure as the cake sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated and set.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps hydrate the flour into a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the cake rises evenly and stays 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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