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Dessert

Corn-starch Cake

A quick cake made with corn starch, sugar, butter, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Corn-starch Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter in a bowl until creamy.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Break in the eggs and beat everything together.

  4. Gently stir in the corn starch and baking powder, then beat for five minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a cake tin with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. After baking, turn the cake out of the tin and let it cool on a plate.

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. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Corn starch
Provides the light, tender crumb by giving structure without much gluten.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a soft texture and rich flavour, and is creamed to trap air.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the cake rise and become airy.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Gently stir in the corn starch and baking powder. Overmixing once the flour-like ingredients are added develops structure and knocks out the air, which can leave the cake dense. Stirring gently keeps the batter light so the baking powder can lift it in the oven.

“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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