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Dessert

One-egg Cake

A simple cake made with one egg, flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, milk, and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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One-egg 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 ↓

One-egg 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

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

  3. Add the egg and milk, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Let cool before serving. Optionally, reserve the egg white for frosting.

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the structure as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Stirring only until just combined keeps the cake tender, while overmixing makes it 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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