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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light cake made with egg whites, butter, sugar, milk, flour, corn starch, cream of tartar, soda, and preserved citron peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Delicate Cake

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 ↓

Delicate 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the flour, corn starch, cream of tartar, and soda, mixing until smooth.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into prepared pans.

  2. Decorate the top with thin pieces of preserved citron peel before baking.

  3. 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.

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.

  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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the cake and gives it a light, delicate crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to help build a light, fluffy base and add sweetness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds acidity that helps the cake rise evenly.
Soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites intact. Stirring vigorously knocks out the air, which leads 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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