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Dessert

Sour Milk Cake

A cake made with sour milk, sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and lemon rind.

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

Sour Milk Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat the eggs separately and set aside.

  3. Mix the sour milk with the baking soda.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking powder three times.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Stir the batter briskly, then combine all ingredients.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased pan.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at first (300°F/150°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

  4. Increase the heat to brown the 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while creaming aerates the batter.

The step that matters

Stir the batter briskly, then combine all ingredients.. Vigorous stirring develops gluten in the flour, which gives structure, but overmixing can toughen the cake. Combining the acid and soda reaction promptly keeps the gas that lifts the batter from escaping.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, 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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