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Dessert

Corn Starch Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, cornstarch, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and almond or vanilla extract.

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

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Starch 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 the batter

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

  2. Cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Mix the cream of tartar with a little water and add it to the eggs one at a time, stirring gently.

  4. Sift the flour and cornstarch together, then add to the batter.

  5. Sift in the baking soda carefully and mix well.

  6. Flavor the batter with almond or vanilla extract.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Cut into squares and ice as desired.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide structure and lift as the batter sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to trap air and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Cornstarch
Lightens the crumb and tenderizes it compared with flour alone.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Sifting in the baking soda carefully and mixing well. Baking soda must be evenly distributed through the batter; clumps leave bitter, soapy pockets and uneven rising, and it needs acid from the cream of tartar to react properly.

“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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