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Dessert

Confectionery Cake

A two-layer cake made with egg whites, egg yolks, butter, milk, flour, sugar, baking powder, lemon flavoring, salt, and optional fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 519 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Confectionery 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. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In a bowl, mix the sugar, butter, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, lemon flavoring, and salt. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  4. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans.

Make the middle layer and bake

  1. For the middle layer, beat the egg yolks and mix with sweet milk, butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the desired fruit to the middle layer mixture.

  3. Pour the middle layer batter over the first layer and bake 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.

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. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture to the middle layer batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring too hard deflates the foam that gives the cake its lift. Fold gently with a spatula so the air stays trapped and the cake rises evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, almond, fig):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, almond, fig. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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