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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light cake made with butter, sugar, egg whites, peach extract, and a pinch of ammonia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Delicate Cake

Why it works: Butter and peach work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 860 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

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

  2. Add a pinch of ammonia and peach extract to the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Gently fold the egg whites into the butter mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a square cake pan lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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 + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter.
Whites of 6 eggs
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give structure as the cake bakes.
Ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent, releasing gas to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light. Fold gently until no white streaks remain.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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