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Dessert

Pook Man's Pound Cake

A simple pound cake made with flour, butter, sugar, sour milk, baking soda, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pook Man's Pound Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Mix in the sugar.

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

  4. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a mold or dish.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 once baked.
Butter
Adds fat that coats flour and makes the crumb tender and rich.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb soft and moist.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas that lifts the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid, such as the sour milk, to release carbon dioxide that lifts the batter. Fully dissolving it and mixing it through evenly helps the cake rise uniformly and avoids bitter pockets of unreacted soda.

“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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