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Dessert

Butter Cake

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Butter Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Beat in the eggs until well combined, maintaining a consistent mixture.

  3. Add the vanilla, then one-third of the milk and one-third of the flour, beating well.

  4. Sift in the last third of the flour with the baking powder and mix well before adding the remaining milk.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in shallow cake pans and layer with different frostings or fillings.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with fat, helps trap air for a lighter crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and moisture, and bind the batter together.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so its proteins can form structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases carbon dioxide gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and a rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs until well combined. Eggs must blend fully into the creamed butter and sugar to form a stable emulsion. If the mixture curdles or separates, it holds less air, which can make the cake dense and uneven.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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