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Dessert

Layer Cake

A layered cake made with butter, lemon, eggs, milk, rose water, flour, corn starch, baking powder, powdered sugar, vanilla sugar, coconut, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Layer 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 ↓

Layer Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream the butter, then add lemon juice and egg yolks; beat until smooth.

  3. Fold in the egg whites, one quarter at a time.

  4. Mix in the milk, rose water, flour, corn starch, and baking powder until light.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly‑cake pans and bake until light brown.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil powdered sugar and water, then add egg whites and cool.

  2. Stir in vanilla sugar once the icing is cold.

Finish and decorate

  1. To decorate, sprinkle each layer with grated coconut or use French icing.

  2. For a Castle Cake, cream together 1 cup butter and 3 cups sugar, then add 1 cup milk.

  3. Mix in baking powder and 4 cups flour, then fold in 10 beaten egg whites.

  4. Layer with a thin coating of boiled icing and sprinkle with grated coconut.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Trap air when folded in, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and richly flavored.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the layers rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while adding color and flavor.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving a finer and more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites, one quarter at a time.. Whipped egg whites hold air that makes the batter light. Adding them in portions and folding gently keeps that air from being knocked out, so the layers rise well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More layer cake recipes

Chocolate 44White 23Fruit 18Orange 16Fig 12Coconut 11 See all 133 →

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