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Dessert

Old Fashioned Pound Cake

A pound cake made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, wine, rose water, nutmeg, flour, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Old Fashioned Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix them with the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. Add the wine, rose water, and grated nutmeg; mix well.

  4. Stir in the sifted flour until combined.

  5. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat, and emulsifying power that binds the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy crumb.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the cake's lift, so folding gently keeps the air in. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leads to a dense, heavy crumb.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, wine, rose, flour. 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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