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Dessert

White Cake

A light, airy cake made with egg whites, butter, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, and vanilla extract.

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

White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and 1 cup of sugar until light.

  2. Beat the egg whites with the remaining cup of sugar.

  3. Mix half of the flour with the creamed butter and sugar.

  4. Add half of the milk.

  5. Add the remaining flour.

  6. Add the rest of the milk.

  7. If the batter is too stiff, add more egg whites to soften it.

  8. Add the extract and baking powder.

Fold and finish

  1. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites.

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 + 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

Egg whites
Whipped with sugar, they trap air that gives the cake its light, open structure.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's main structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds tenderness, richness and a fine crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air in the creamed butter and whites.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes softly.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the remaining egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that lifts the batter. Stirring hard or too long deflates them, leaving a dense, heavy cake with less rise.

“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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