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Dessert

White Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, flour, baking powder, egg whites, butter, milk, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Cake

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 ↓

White 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. In a mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour, and baking powder.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

Make the batter

  1. In a cup, measure ½ cup soft butter and fill the cup with milk.

  2. Add the butter and milk mixture to the dry ingredients along with flavoring.

  3. Beat all ingredients together for 5 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake 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.

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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air that helps the cake rise and gives it a light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and contributes flavor.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and helps form the batter.

The step that matters

Beat all ingredients together for 5 minutes. Beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives structure but can make the cake tough if overdone. Beat just long enough to combine and smooth the batter, and keep the egg-white air as intact as possible.

“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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