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Dessert

Gold Cake

A sweet cake made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, milk, flour, and leavening agents.

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 ↓

Gold Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift flour once, then measure, add baking soda, and sift three times.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly.

  3. Beat the egg yolks until light, add cream of tartar, and beat to stiff froth.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the yolk mixture with the creamed butter and sugar, stirring thoroughly.

  2. Add the milk, then gradually mix in the flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 to 50 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 yolks
Add richness and structure, and when beaten to a stiff froth they lighten the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg yolks and adds acidity that works with the baking soda.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Beating the egg yolks to a stiff froth. Whipped yolks trap air that lifts the batter. If they are under-beaten, the cake rises less and turns denser. Cream of tartar helps the foam hold its shape.

“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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