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Dessert

White Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, butter, egg whites, milk, pastry flour, baking powder, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White 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 ↓

White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk.

  5. Sift together the pastry flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  6. Mix until smooth and add flavoring to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans.

  2. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Let cool and use any filling desired.

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Pastry flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, causing the batter to rise in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps give a fine, tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the cake's air. Mixing them too vigorously knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense and flat instead of light.

“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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