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Dessert

Lunch Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Lunch 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 ↓

Lunch 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat together the butter, eggs, and sugar.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk. Add the rest of the milk and cream of tartar. Stir until it foams.

  4. Add the foamed mixture to the butter, eggs, and sugar.

  5. Stir in the flour lightly last.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan.

  2. Bake until golden.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake tenderness and flavor.
Eggs
Provide structure as they set, and add moisture and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning, while tenderizing the crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once baked.
Milk
Adds moisture and dissolves the leavening to activate it in the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour lightly last. Overmixing flour develops gluten, which makes the cake tough. Folding it in gently at the end keeps the crumb tender while the leavening gas is still being released.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, flour, milk, cream):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, milk, 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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