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Dessert

Mock Lady Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg whites, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mock Lady 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 butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and mix until well combined.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently until just combined.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake as it sets.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air that lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake tender and lightly browned.
Sweet milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter moisture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Stirring hard deflates the air trapped in the whites, so the cake rises less and bakes up denser. Fold just until combined to keep the batter light.

“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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