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Baking

Cornstarch Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, corn starch, flour, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Cornstarch 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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the melted butter and sweet milk, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Sift together the corn starch, flour, and baking powder, then fold into the wet ingredients.

Bake and finish

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

  2. Let cool and ice with soft 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender crumb.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a moist, tender texture.
Corn starch
Lightens the crumb and gives the cake a soft, delicate texture.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Fold the dry ingredients in gently. Overmixing after adding the flour and cornstarch develops gluten and deflates the batter, which can leave the cake dense and tough instead of light.

“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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