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Dessert

Cleveland Cake

A sweet cake made with corn starch, wheat flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, eggs, sweet milk, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cleveland Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Sift together corn starch, wheat flour, powdered sugar, and baking powder into a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and sweet milk thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, then stir in the melted butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into a square baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Wheat flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb, giving a tender texture compared with flour alone.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid to hydrate the flour and starch so the batter forms.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until done. A low oven heats the cake gently so it cooks through evenly without browning too fast or drying out. Baking powder gas escapes if the batter sits too long, so bake promptly after mixing.

“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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