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Dessert

Webster Cake

A simple cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, salt, and optional fruit and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Webster Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Webster 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  5. Fold in fruit and spices if desired.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for about 30 minutes or until 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.

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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the butter cream to a light, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the proteins set during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Saleratus
A leavening agent that releases gas to lift and lighten the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Flour's gluten develops with stirring, so mixing only until the batter is smooth keeps the cake tender rather than tough 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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