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Dessert

Lady Cake

A light, airy cake made with butter, powdered sugar, egg whites, flour, baking powder, and vanilla or mace or rose flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lady Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and 2 pounds of sugar with 1 pint of egg whites.

  2. Beat the remaining 2 pints of egg whites to a firm froth and gradually add the remaining sugar, mixing as for meringue.

  3. Combine both mixtures.

  4. Add the flours and baking powder, mixing lightly but thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven like a pound cake.

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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give a rich, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to a firm froth, they add lift and an airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps tenderize the crumb when creamed with butter.
Cake flour
Low-protein flour that gives a fine, tender crumb.
Strong flour
Higher-protein flour that adds structure to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, causing the cake to rise.

The step that matters

Add the flours and baking powder, mixing lightly but thoroughly. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which toughens the crumb, and it also knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the cake rises less and turns dense.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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