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Dessert

Crumb Cake

A simple cake with a crumb topping made from flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, eggs, and milk.

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

Crumb 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 dough

  1. Sift together flour, sugar, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in butter until the mixture resembles crumbs.

  3. Set aside ½ cup of the mixture for topping.

  4. Add beaten eggs and enough sweet milk to form a dough.

Bake

  1. Divide the batter into two cake pans.

  2. Sprinkle the reserved crumbs on top.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cake set and hold its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, letting the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Rub in butter until the mixture resembles crumbs. Coating flour particles with fat limits gluten development, so the cake stays tender rather than tough. Stopping when the texture looks like coarse crumbs keeps the fat evenly distributed.

“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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