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Dessert

Surprise Cake

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, egg, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Surprise Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Mix the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add egg and mix well.

  4. Stir in sweet milk.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine baking soda and cream of tartar.

  6. Add dry ingredients to wet mixture and mix until smooth.

  7. Add flavoring to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Egg + buttertop 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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb and browning.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Sweet milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with an acid to release gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with baking soda to leaven the batter.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beating air into the butter and sugar creates tiny bubbles that help the cake rise and give a fine, even crumb. Under-creamed batter tends to bake up dense.

“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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