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Dessert

Velvet Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, flour, butter, eggs, water, cream of tartar, baking soda, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Velvet 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 the leavening

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the cold water.

  2. Sift the cream of tartar into the flour.

Mix and bake

  1. Beat the sugar and butter together until creamy.

  2. Add the flour and water, stirring well.

  3. Next, add the eggs, well beaten.

  4. Flavor with a few drops of lemon essence.

  5. Beat all together for 3 minutes.

  6. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Flour + buttertop 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. 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake once the proteins and starch set in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich in flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help bind the batter as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that lifts the cake.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acid that reacts with the baking soda to produce rising gas.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda and combining the leavening. Baking soda and cream of tartar start releasing gas as soon as they meet liquid and acid. Mixing them in promptly and baking without delay keeps that gas in the batter, so the cake rises well.

“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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