Name: Delicate Cake
Ingredients: 12 egg whites; ¾ cup butter; ¾ pound sugar; 1 pot (about 4 cups) flour; 2 tablespoons milk; 2 tablespoons baking powder; ½ pot (about 2 cups) corn starch (optional)

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

Prepare the batter

Beat the egg whites until frothy.
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Mix the baking powder with the flour.
If using, add corn starch in place of some flour for improvement.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into square tins for jelly cakes.
Bake until golden, then cool and cut into slices.
Fill with lemon honey instead of jelly for a delicious treat.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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: Whipped to a froth, they trap air and give the cake its light structure.
Butter: Creamed with sugar, it holds air bubbles and adds richness and tenderness.
Sugar: Creamed with butter, it helps build the airy texture and adds sweetness and browning.
Flour: Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.

“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.