Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
White Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Cream together the butter and sugar with the flavoring.
Add 3 cups of flour and the milk, then beat the batter for 25 to 30 minutes.
Sift the remaining cup of flour with the baking powder several times and add it to the batter.
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.
Bake
Bake in layers.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it sets.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, soft texture in the crumb.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
- Eggs
- Egg whites add structure and lift when beaten and folded into the batter.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour to form the batter.
The step that matters
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give the cake its lift. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates them, leading to a dense, flat cake.
“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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