Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Raspberry Cake with Lattice Work
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Beat the egg yolks with sugar until light.
Add flour and baking powder, then fold in the beaten egg whites.
Pour the batter into a baking tin.
Bake and finish
Bake according to Caloric vessel directions for 1¼ hours.
When the cake is cold, fill the lattice work with raspberries.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour 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 and folded in, they trap air that lifts the cake's crumb.
- Egg yolks
- Beaten with sugar, they add richness and help build a tender structure.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
- Well cooked-down raspberries
- Supply fruit flavour, sweetness, and moisture for the lattice filling.
The step that matters
Folding in the egg whites. Overmixing or deflating the beaten whites knocks out the air they hold, leading to a dense, flat cake instead of a light one.
“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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