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Dessert

Golden Loaf Cake

A cake made with pastry flour, baking soda, egg yolks, milk, vanilla, egg whites, and cream of tartar baked in a tube pan.

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

Golden Loaf Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the cream of tartar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Sift the pastry flour with the baking soda three times.

Make and bake

  1. Add the egg yolks, milk, and flour to the mixture.

  2. Flavor with vanilla and beat well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  4. Pour the batter into a tube pan and bake until golden.

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. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they trap air and lighten the batter for a airy rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites so their foam holds its volume.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Stirring vigorously deflates the air bubbles in the whipped whites, which are what lift the cake, so the batter loses its rise and turns dense.

Swap the vanilla

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, 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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