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Dessert

Cold Water Cake

A simple cake made with cold water, butter, sugar, egg, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, essence, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cold Water 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg and cold water, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  5. Add essence to taste and mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake until golden brown.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for lift.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense. Stop stirring as soon as no dry streaks remain.

“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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