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Dessert

Thanksgiving Cake

A cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, citron, lemon extract, baked in layers, topped with a sugar‑egg white icing.

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 ↓

Thanksgiving 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.

Make the cake batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Separate the eggs.

  3. Add the beaten yolks to the butter mixture, then stir in the milk.

  4. Sift the baking powder with the flour and add to the mixture along with the lemon extract.

  5. Fold in the finely chopped citron and then gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake in three layers at 350°F (175°C).

  2. For the icing, boil 2 cups of sugar with a little water until it spins a thread.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites to the sugar syrup and beat until thick enough to spread.

  4. Add the lemon extract for flavoring.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten the crumb.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb and browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Citron
Adds candied fruit flavor and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten and folded in gently so the air they hold is kept; deflating the batter makes the layers rise less and turn dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, milk, 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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