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Dessert

Feather Cake

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

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

Feather Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks and whites separately.

  5. Add the yolks to the mixture.

  6. Mix in 1 cup of flour with the cream of tartar.

  7. Add 2 more cups of flour without the cream of tartar.

  8. Beat thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-buttered tin.

  2. Enclose the tin in a 'Papakuk' bag.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 a tender crumb and moist texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, with the yolks adding fat and the whites adding lift.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's rise and shape as it sets.
Baking soda
Produces carbon dioxide gas when it meets an acid, which makes the batter rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to release gas for leavening.

The step that matters

Beat thoroughly. Baking soda releases carbon dioxide gas when it meets an acid such as cream of tartar. Beating the batter well spreads that gas evenly through it, and the gas is what lifts the cake.

“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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