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Dessert

Velvet Cake

A cake made with milk, eggs, yeast, butter, and flour, baked in muffin rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Velvet Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the milk, beaten eggs, and yeast in a bowl.

  2. Mix well.

  3. Let the mixture rise until doubled in size.

  4. Beat the butter into the flour until well combined.

Cook

  1. Pour the batter into greased muffin rings.

  2. Bake on a griddle until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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
Add structure and richness to the batter as they set during cooking.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise until doubled in size.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the finished cake.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set on heating.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and expand the batter. Rising too short leaves the cakes dense, while the browning on the griddle depends on the batter having risen properly first.

“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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