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Dessert

Cherry Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices, vanilla, cocoa, sour milk, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Cherry Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the spices, salt, vanilla extract, and flour mixed with baking powder.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and cherries.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into layers and bake.

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. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift when the whites are beaten and folded in.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated batter when creamed.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and cherries. Folding gently keeps the air in the beaten egg whites. Overmixing deflates the batter, which leads to a denser, flatter cake.

“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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