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Dessert

Beautiful White Cake

A light, airy cake made with flour, sugar, egg whites, butter, and whisky.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beautiful White 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine the flour and sugar.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter and let it cool slightly, then add it to the flour and sugar mixture.

  2. Fold in the egg whites gently until just combined.

  3. Stir in the whisky.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + whiskytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts and lightens the batter.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Whisky
Adds aroma and flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the cake rises less and bakes up denser.

“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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