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Dessert

White Citron Cake

A light, citrusy cake made with shredded citron, butter, sugar, flour, baking soda, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Citron 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

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Sift in the baking soda, salt, and flour.

  3. Add the water and the prepared citron, mixing until combined.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that activates the baking soda and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.
Citron
Adds moisture and its candied, fragrant flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves a dense, flat cake.

“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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