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Dessert

White Pound Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with equal parts sugar, flour, butter, and egg whites, topped with a boiled sugar syrup and whipped egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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White Pound Cake

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking powder and gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  6. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, boil 3 cups of sugar in 1 cup of water until clear.

  2. Beat 3 egg whites to stiff peaks and pour the boiling syrup over them while beating continuously for 10 minutes.

  3. Frost the cake while both the cake and icing are warm.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set during baking.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, soft texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be poured slowly into constantly beaten egg whites. Hot syrup cooks the whites into a stable, glossy meringue; pouring too fast or stopping the beating can leave the icing runny or grainy.

“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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