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Dessert

Corn-starch Cake

A sweet cake made with corn starch, flour, butter, sugar, egg whites, cream of tartar, baking soda, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, rub the cream of tartar into the flour.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of sweet milk and set aside the dissolved baking soda mixture.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg whites and mix until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the flour mixture and the dissolved baking soda, then mix gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or 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.

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 + 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Corn starch
Gives a fine, tender crumb because it contains little gluten-forming protein.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and carrying flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with the butter.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift as proteins set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda can react and help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour mixture and baking soda, then mixing gently. Once flour is added, stirring too vigorously develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense. Mixing only until combined keeps the crumb tender.

“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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