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Dessert

Corn Starch Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, egg whites, baking powder, corn starch, milk, and optional flavoring.

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

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Gradually add the flour, mixing well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

  5. Mix the baking powder with the flour. Add the baking powder mixture to the batter.

  6. Mix the corn starch with the milk until smooth. Fold the corn starch mixture into the batter.

  7. Add the chosen flavoring. Mix gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a flat tin pan.

  2. Bake until golden.

  3. Let the cake cool.

  4. Cut the cooled cake into diamond shapes.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed mixture hold air for a light texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens and structures the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Corn starch
Lightens the crumb and gives a fine, tender texture because it contains no gluten.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring instead of folding knocks out the air trapped in the whipped whites, so the cake rises less and turns denser. Fold gently until no white streaks remain.

“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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