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Dessert

Centennial Cake

A light sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, water, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Centennial 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

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together for two minutes.

  2. Add the flour, cold water, and melted butter, mixing for another two minutes.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the batter, beating for two minutes.

Add the whites and bake

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped and folded in, add lift and structure.
Flour
Flour provides the structure that holds the cake's airy crumb once it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when beaten with the yolks.
Melted butter
Melted butter adds fat, which gives the cake richness and a tender texture.
Baking powder
Baking powder releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Gently fold the egg whites into the batter. Whipped egg whites hold air bubbles that give the cake its lift. Stirring or beating vigorously at this point deflates them, leaving a denser 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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