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Dessert

One Egg Cake

A simple cake made with one egg, sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, cake flour, baking powder, and topped with a chocolate‑egg yolk icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

One Egg 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.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. Add the beaten egg, milk, and vanilla extract; mix well.

  4. Sift together the cake flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30 minutes.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, mix the cream or milk with the egg yolk.

  2. Melt the chocolate with the teaspoon of butter, then combine with the cream mixture.

  3. Add powdered sugar until the icing reaches your desired thickness.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 richness and structure as the cake sets.
Cake flour
Provides the main structure of the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderise the crumb and aid browning.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the cake batter.

The step that matters

Adding the powdered sugar to the icing. Powdered sugar thickens icing gradually as it dissolves and sets, so adding it slowly lets you stop at the right consistency before it becomes too stiff to spread.

“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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