Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Feather Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).
Make the batter
In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the milk and lemon extract, mixing well.
In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.
Bake
Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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 create a soft, tender crumb when creamed.
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidic ingredient that works with baking soda to help the cake rise and stay light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and helps form a smooth batter that bakes through.
The step that matters
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding the dry ingredients gradually and stirring only until smooth keeps the batter from being overmixed. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, flour, egg, butter, cream):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, egg, butter, cream. 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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