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 ↓
Pound Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the batter
Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Beat the egg yolks until very light.
Froth the egg whites separately.
Stir the sugar into the yolks.
Mix in the creamed butter and flour until smooth.
Work the butter to remove salt.
Cream the butter with the flour until it resembles thick cream.
Combine the butter and flour mixture with the yolks.
Beat the mixture for 20 minutes.
Bake
Grease a cake pan with lard.
Pour the batter into the pan.
Bake until golden.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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
- Provide structure as they set, and whipped foam adds lightness to the batter.
- Butter
- Adds richness and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air in the batter.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure as it bakes.
- Granulated sugar
- Adds sweetness and, when creamed, helps aerate the batter for a finer crumb.
The step that matters
Beat the mixture for 20 minutes. Long beating incorporates air that leavens the cake and begins gluten development in the flour. Beating too little leaves a dense cake, while the batter's structure depends on the air and flour being evenly combined.
“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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