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Dessert

Whipped-cream Cake

A light cake made with sugar, eggs, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, topped with whipped sweet cream.

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 ↓

Whipped-cream 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat together sugar, eggs, butter, and milk until well combined.

  3. In another bowl, mix flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix until smooth.

  5. Pour the batter into a small square baking pan.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let the cake cool completely.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the sweet cream until stiff, sweeten and flavor to taste.

  2. Spread the whipped cream over the cooled cake and serve fresh.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and a richer flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sweet cream
Whipped into stiff peaks, it forms a light, airy topping.

The step that matters

Mixing in the dry ingredients. Once flour is combined with the wet mixture, gluten begins to develop. Stirring only until smooth keeps the cake tender rather than tough.

“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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