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Dessert

Layer or White Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with egg whites, sugar, butter, milk, flour, lemon and vanilla, baked in a buttered tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Layer or White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the milk, lemon extract, and vanilla extract, and mix well.

  3. Combine the baking powder with the flour and sift several times.

  4. Stir the flour mixture in alternately with the beaten egg whites, stirring always in one direction. Beat the mixture well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a buttered and floured cake tin.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 (whites)
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, providing the cake's main structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Creaming with butter traps air and sweetens the cake while helping it brown.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are beaten. Stirring alternately in one direction, gently and without overmixing, keeps that air in the batter, while overmixing deflates it and toughens the crumb.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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