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Dessert

Puff Cake

A light, sweet cake made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Puff 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the sweet milk, baking powder, and eggs (except the reserved egg white), then mix until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Whip the reserved egg white and frost the cake once cooled.

  3. Sprinkle nutmeg on top to taste.

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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creamed with sugar it traps air for a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and add sweetness and browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heated batter, helping the cake rise.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the batter can blend and bake through evenly.

The step that matters

Cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beating sugar into butter traps air bubbles that expand in the oven and give the cake its lift. Under-creaming leaves a dense, heavy crumb.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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