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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light cake made with butter, sugar, egg whites, milk, flour, and almond or vanilla extract, finished with a frosted glaze.

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

Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. 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 sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and gradually add the flour until combined.

  4. Add the almond or vanilla extract and mix until smooth.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg yolks and gradually add confectioner's sugar until thickened.

  2. Flavor the frosting with vanilla or almond extract.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 give a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, softens the crumb, and helps the surface brown.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they add air and lift so the cake rises and stays light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter forms.
All-purpose flour
Provides the protein and starch that set the cake's structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk and add the flour until just combined. Once flour is wet, gluten forms and grows with each stir. Mixing only until combined keeps the cake tender; 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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