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Dessert

Feather Cake

A two-layer cake with a dark brown sugar and raisin base and a white sugar and butter top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Feather Cake

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Feather 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 dark batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together brown sugar and butter.

  3. Add sour milk, flour, chopped raisins, dissolved baking soda, molasses, egg yolks, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg. Mix well.

Make the white batter

  1. In another bowl, combine flour, cornstarch, sweet milk, butter, white sugar, and baking powder.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold into the white mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer the dark and white mixtures in a baking pan.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 peaks, they add lightness and help the white layer rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and structure to the dark layer.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the dark layer rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the white batter, giving it lift and a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in both batters.
Cornstarch
Softens the flour's gluten, making the white layer finer and more tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stirring instead of gently folding deflates the whipped foam, so the white layer loses the air that gives it lift and a light texture.

“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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