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Dessert

Feather Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Feather Cake

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 ↓

Feather 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sugar, butter, and milk, and mix well.

  2. Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar into the flour.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.

  4. Flavor the batter with lemon extract to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Add structure and richness, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and keep it tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to lift the batter as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Stirring gently and only until combined keeps the batter light. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense, and it also releases carbon dioxide too early, weakening the rise.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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