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Dessert

National Cake

A layered cake with white, blue, and red sections made with sugar, butter, milk, egg whites, flour, and leavening agents.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

National Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the white part

  1. For the white part, cream together the white sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sweet milk, beaten egg whites, corn starch, and flour mixed with cream of tartar and baking soda.

  3. Flavor with lemon extract.

Make the blue part

  1. For the blue part, cream together the blue sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sweet milk, beaten egg whites, and flour mixed with cream of tartar and baking soda.

Make the red part

  1. For the red part, cream together the red sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sweet milk, beaten egg whites, and flour mixed with cream of tartar and baking soda.

Layer and bake

  1. In a cake pan, layer the red, white, and blue mixtures.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Trap air and help the cake set with a light, airy structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavour.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Layer the red, white, and blue mixtures. Each batter must be thick enough to hold its own layer. If batters are too thin or are spooned in carelessly, the colours blend and the layers blur as the cake bakes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg, corn, flour, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, corn, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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