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Dessert

Small Sunshine Cake

A light, airy cake made with egg whites, yolks, sugar, flour, vanilla, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Small Sunshine 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 batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy, then add the cream of tartar.

  3. Continue beating until stiff and dry, gradually adding the powdered sugar.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and vanilla extract, mixing well.

  5. Fold in the sifted flour gently.

Bake

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

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 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. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they trap air that lifts and gives the cake its light structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites, helping the foam hold its shape longer.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the whites as they whip, adding sweetness and making the foam more stable.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help set the crumb as the cake bakes.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its set, sliceable structure.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped egg whites intact. Stirring or deflating the batter at this stage leads to a dense cake that does not rise well.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream. 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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