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Dessert

One, Two, Three, Four Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

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

One, Two, Three, Four 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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and egg yolks until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the flour and mix thoroughly.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  5. If omitting eggs, mix 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar into the flour, then combine with the butter and sugar.

Bake

  1. When ready to bake, quickly mix in 1 teaspoon of baking soda or sal volatile solution.

  2. Pour the batter into two loaf pans and bake immediately.

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
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and lift; whipped whites help the batter rise and set.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the egg whites for a lighter texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after adding the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the acid in the batter as soon as it is mixed in, releasing gas. If the batter waits, much of that lift is lost before the cake sets in the oven, so the cake may come out flat 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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