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Dessert

Family Cake

A cake made with rice flour, all-purpose flour, eggs, sugar, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Family Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine the rice flour, all-purpose flour, egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, and caraway seeds.

  3. Beat the mixture for 1 hour until well combined and fluffy.

  4. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 1 hour.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + carawaytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped air and volume give the cake its light, fluffy structure.
Egg yolks
Fat and emulsifiers add richness and help the batter bind smoothly.
Rice flour
Provides a tender crumb with a lighter texture than wheat flour alone.
All-purpose flour
Gluten forms the framework that holds the cake's structure as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air during beating for a fine texture.

The step that matters

Beating the batter for 1 hour. Long beating incorporates air that the batter relies on to rise in the oven. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the air must be kept in the batter until it bakes and sets.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

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