Name: One Egg Cake
Ingredients: 1 egg; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup milk; 1 cup all-purpose flour (more or less); 2 teaspoons baking powder; 2 tablespoons melted butter; Flavoring to taste

Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Make the batter

Beat the egg until light.
Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
Mix in the milk.
Sift the flour and baking powder together twice, then mix with the egg mixture.
Finally, add the melted butter and flavor to taste.

Bake

Bake in a flat pan.

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.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 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

Egg: Beaten egg adds structure and helps bind the batter as it sets.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and adds tenderness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour: Provides the main structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Melted butter: Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

“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.