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Dessert

Angel Cake

A light, airy cake made from sugar, flour, egg whites, cream of tartar, salt, and almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Angel Cake

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Angel Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the sugar and flour together once, then sift them together 5 more times.

  2. Add salt to the egg whites and beat until light.

  3. Sift in the cream of tartar and continue beating until very stiff and dry.

  4. Carefully cut and fold the egg whites into the flour and sugar mixture, then add the almond flavoring.

Bake

  1. Line an angel cake tin with oiled paper, pour in the batter, and place it in a cool oven.

  2. After 25 minutes, increase the oven temperature and bake for an additional 25 minutes.

  3. Avoid jarring the cake while it bakes.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the whipped egg white foam stable.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking to give the cake its crumb.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, stabilizing the foam so it holds its volume.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the flour and sugar mixture. Overmixing or deflating the whipped egg whites knocks out the air that makes the cake rise. Gentle cutting and folding keeps the foam intact so the batter bakes up light.

“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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