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Dessert

Ashland Cake

A layered cake with butter, sweet milk, flour, sugar, corn starch, egg whites, baking powder, lemon extract, and a lemon‑vanilla filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ashland 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, corn starch, baking powder, and lemon extract. Mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into two deep jelly tins and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the granulated sugar and boiling water until it reaches a soft ball stage.

  2. Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites while continuously beating until thick.

  3. Add the citric acid, lemon extract, and vanilla extract to the filling and mix well.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cake and over the 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Adds fat and richness, and helps the cake crumb stay tender.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb and makes the cake more tender than flour alone.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while keeping the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Beating the hot syrup into the egg whites. Hot sugar syrup cooks the egg white proteins as it is beaten in, which stabilises the foam into a thick, marshmallow-like filling. Pouring slowly while beating keeps the syrup from scrambling the whites or deflating them.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, flour, sugar, corn, egg, vanilla):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour, sugar, corn, egg, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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