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Dessert

Rocky Mountain Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, salt, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Rocky Mountain 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add your chosen flavoring and the well-beaten eggs; mix well.

  3. Sift the baking powder and salt into part of the flour, then add it to the mixture.

  4. Pour in the milk and add the rest of the flour; mix thoroughly for ten minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into gem pans or your preferred baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed, adding lightness and browning.
Eggs
Provide structure as they set, and add moisture and richness to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps dissolve the sugar, making the batter smooth and tender.

The step that matters

Mixing the batter for ten minutes. Mixing develops gluten in the flour, which strengthens the structure. Over-mixing after the flour is added can make the cake tough and dense, so the batter should be mixed thoroughly but not beaten for longer than needed.

“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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