Skip to main content
Dessert

Angel Cake

A light, airy cake made from whipped egg whites, flour, sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Angel Cake

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Angel Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Sift the flour five times to make it very light.

  3. Sift the powdered sugar with the flour once.

  4. Add the cream of tartar and sift again with the sugar and flour.

  5. Pour in the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  6. Add the lemon or vanilla extract.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into an angel food cake pan without greasing it.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Once baked, turn the pan upside down on a cloth to cool.

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

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that traps air and gives the cake its rise and airy structure.
Flour
Provides structure once baked, holding the airy foam together as the cake sets.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and, being fine, blends smoothly into the batter.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites, helping the foam hold its volume and stay tender.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into an ungreased pan. Angel food batter has no fat and relies on clinging to the pan sides to climb while baking. Greasing the pan lets the batter slip and collapse, so the cake may fail to rise fully.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More angel food cake recipes

Orange 5 See all 197 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes