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Dessert

Pinafore Cake

A butter, sugar, milk, baking soda, egg, corn starch, flour, and cream of tartar cake baked at 400°F.

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 ↓

Pinafore Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix until well combined.

  3. Stir in the milk and baking soda.

  4. Add the beaten eggs, corn starch, flour, and cream of tartar, then mix until the batter is smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into baking sheets and bake until golden.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming with the butter.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter hold together as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that supports the baking soda's reaction and stabilises the batter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the baking soda with the milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas for rising. Adding it to the liquid and then mixing promptly lets the reaction work in the batter, so the cake rises well once it is in the oven.

“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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