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Dessert

Sandwich Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, leavening, lemon, and filled with jelly, custard, or coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Sandwich Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the butter mixture.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture.

  6. Combine the flour mixture with the butter mixture, adding lemon extract to taste.

  7. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into four flat tins and bake for about 15-20 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, layer with jelly, custard, or moistened desiccated coconut mixed with beaten egg whites for icing.

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 + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, making the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to add lift and help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lightens the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate it and leave a denser cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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