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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light cake made with butter, powdered sugar, flour, milk, egg whites, and almond or lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Delicate Cake

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Delicate 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. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until well combined.

  2. Sift the cream of tartar and baking soda with the flour.

  3. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and the almond or lemon extract.

Bake

  1. Bake in a tube pan or layer pans at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, helping the cake rise and stay light.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas for rising.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the cake dense and less airy.

“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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