Skip to main content
Dessert

Victoeia Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, butter, sweet milk, flour, corn starch, baking powder, and egg whites, frosted between layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Victoeia Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour, corn starch, and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and frost

  1. Bake in layers and frost between the layers and on top.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tender texture, and flavor.
Sugar
Creaming with butter traps air, and sugar adds sweetness and helps browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise in the oven.
Corn starch
Dilutes the flour's gluten, producing a more tender, fine crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold trapped air that gives the cake its rise. Stirring or mixing vigorously deflates the foam, leading to a dense cake. Gentle folding keeps the air in the batter.

“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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes