Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Walnut 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.
Make the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Slowly stir in the milk.
In a separate bowl, beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.
Add the yolks to the butter and sugar mixture.
Fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.
Sift in the flour and add the broken walnuts last.
Bake and finish
Pour the batter into square pans and bake until golden.
Frost both cakes with icing and stack one on top of the other.
Cut the frosting into small squares and place half a walnut in the center of each square.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,873 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Eggs
- Whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness, moisture and structure.
- Butter
- Fat that creates a tender crumb and rich flavor.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake, tenderizes the crumb and helps it brown.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and loosens the batter.
The step that matters
Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites. Stirring hard would deflate them, leaving the cake dense instead of light.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, flour, egg):
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits about as well
- Milletfits about as well
- Walnutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, flour, egg. 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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