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Dessert

Brooklyn Tea Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Brooklyn Tea 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour and cream of tartar.

  2. Stir in the sugar and butter until well combined.

  3. Add the eggs directly into the flour mixture without beating.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Mix in enough milk to achieve a consistency similar to hasty pudding.

  6. Beat the mixture well and 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas, lifting the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the finished cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the surface as it bakes.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well and bake immediately. Baking soda and cream of tartar react as soon as they are combined with liquid, releasing gas. Delaying the bake lets that gas escape, so the cake may rise poorly and turn out flat and dense.

“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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