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Dessert

A Nice Light Cake

A light cake made with flour, milk, eggs, currants, lemon rind, candied peel, butter, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

A Nice Light 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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Rub the butter into the flour mixture until crumbly.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, mix the milk with the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Combine the wet and dry ingredients.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.

  4. Pour the mixture into a well‑greased cake tin.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1½ hours or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + buttertop 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the batter, and whipped whites add lightness and structure.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it coats flour particles and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and a moist crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lifts the batter. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, lemon, butter, sugar. 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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