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Dessert

Cake Raised with Powders

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, cream of tartar, baking soda, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cake Raised with Powders

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Mix butter, sugar, and egg yolks in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Gradually add flour and mix thoroughly.

  3. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Fold beaten egg whites into the batter.

  5. If omitting eggs, mix 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar into the flour.

  6. Combine butter and sugar, then add the flour mixture.

Add the leavening and bake

  1. Mix baking soda into 1 cup of warm water.

  2. Add the warm water mixture to the batter quickly.

  3. Pour batter into a greased loaf pan.

  4. Bake immediately.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Eggs
Egg whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air, giving the cake lift and an airy structure.
Baking soda
Releases carbon dioxide when dissolved and reacting with an acid, leavening the batter.
Cream of tartar
Provides the acid that reacts with baking soda and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and softens the crumb by interfering with gluten development.

The step that matters

Add the warm water mixture to the batter quickly, then bake immediately. Baking soda and cream of tartar begin releasing carbon dioxide as soon as they are wet. Delaying the mix or the oven lets that gas escape before the batter sets, leaving a flatter 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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