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Dessert

Vanity Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, corn starch, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Vanity 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 ↓

Vanity 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. 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 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, corn starch, and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  5. Divide the batter evenly between two greased cake pans.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Let the cakes cool before icing with your choice of icing.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give it a light, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and tenderness, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form the batter into a smooth, pourable mixture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving the cake a finer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, so stirring only until just combined keeps the cake tender rather than tough and dense.

“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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