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Dessert

Corn Starch Cake

A sweet cake made with corn starch, flour, sugar, butter, egg whites, sweet milk, baking powder, and almond 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together until smooth.

  2. Whip the egg whites to a froth and fold them into the creamed mixture.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the corn starch, flour, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  6. Flavor with your preferred extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

  3. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake's crumb.
Corn starch
Its fine starch softens the crumb and makes the cake more tender than flour alone.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped well; overmixing or deflating them when folding in makes the cake dense and less airy.

“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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