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Dessert

One Egg Cake

A light cake made with one egg, butter, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, lemon and vanilla extracts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

One Egg Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and beaten egg, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix and sift the flour and baking powder.

  4. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  5. Stir in the lemon and vanilla extracts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two buttered layer cake pans or one shallow buttered pan.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Butter
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it spreads evenly in the pan.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk. Adding the dry and liquid parts in portions keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing, which would toughen the cake's texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, flour, egg, vanilla. 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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