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Dessert

Cheap Cake

A simple cake made with egg, butter, water, flour, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheap Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the egg into a tea cup.

  2. Fill the cup halfway with melted butter and then fill it with cold water.

  3. Sift together the flour, sugar, and baking powder two or three times.

Mix and bake

  1. Sift the mixture into a mixing bowl, then add the egg mixture and beat well.

  2. For a white cake, use two egg whites instead of one whole egg.

  3. Bake in a loaf or layer pan.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter, helping it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to softness and browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Sift the dry ingredients two or three times. Sifting aerates and evenly distributes the baking powder and flour, so the cake rises evenly and avoids dense pockets or lumps in the batter.

“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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