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Dessert

Delicate Cake

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

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

Delicate 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

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

Make the batter

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

  2. Mix the baking powder with the flour, then add to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the milk until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into square tins for jelly cakes.

  2. Bake until golden, then let cool and cut into slices.

  3. Fill with lemon honey instead of jelly for a delicious treat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Egg whites
Beaten to a froth, they add lightness and help trap air in the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the mixture and add sweetness and browning.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that expand in the oven. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, so the mixture should look pale and airy before the flour goes in.

“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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