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Baking

Railroad Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, milk, baking soda, eggs, cream of tartar, flour, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Railroad 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Rub the cream of tartar thoroughly into the flour.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  4. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, milk with dissolved soda, salt, lemon juice, and flour with cream of tartar to the mixture. Mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased baking pan and bake until golden.

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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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

Eggs
Beaten separately and folded in, they add structure and lift to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar and lemon juice to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda, producing lift and a tender crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add fat, richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for sweetness and a fine, even texture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the milk before adding it to the batter. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it spreads evenly and reacts with the acids in the batter. Undissolved pockets can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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