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Dessert

Feather Cake

A light cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, milk, baking powder, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Feather 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 ↓

Feather 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift the baking powder with the flour.

  3. Beat the egg yolks separately.

  4. Beat the egg whites separately.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually add sugar to the yolks until fully incorporated.

  2. Mix in the softened butter until well combined.

  3. Add the milk and mix until smooth.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Flavor the batter with lemon.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a pound cake pan.

  2. Bake 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure, while whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize its crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Stirring them in roughly or too long knocks out air and leaves a dense, flat result, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, milk. 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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