Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Sunshine 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
Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Sift the flour seven times.
Make the batter
Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the cream of tartar and salt.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and then mix in the sugar.
Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture, followed by the flour.
Add lemon flavoring to taste.
Bake
Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake slowly.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 until stiff, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and moisture, and help the cake set as it bakes.
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch that sets the structure of the cake as it bakes.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the batter and adds tenderness to the crumb.
- Cream of tartar
- Stabilizes the beaten egg whites, helping them hold their foam.
The step that matters
Folding the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture. Stiff egg whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and yields a lighter cake.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, egg, cream):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, cream. 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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