Skip to main content
Dessert

Bisque Cake

A layered cake made with powdered sugar, flour, butter, egg whites, milk, baking powder, vanilla, egg yolks, hickory nuts, and confectioner's sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Bisque Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Stir in the milk.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites very lightly.

  5. Flavor with vanilla.

Bake

  1. Bake in three layers.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg yolks thoroughly.

  2. Add enough confectioner's sugar to make a stiff spread.

  3. Chop the hickory nuts finely.

  4. Mix in with a drop of vanilla.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they trap air that lightens the cake's crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves finely into the butter for a tender texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites very lightly. Beaten egg whites hold air bubbles that give the cake lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the layers bake up dense instead of light.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, egg, milk, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg, milk, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes