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Dessert

Corn Starch Cake

A light cake made with butter, sugar, flour, egg whites, baking powder, corn starch, milk, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Corn Starch Cake

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 ↓

Corn Starch 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

Make the batter

  1. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing well.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  3. Mix the corn starch with the milk until smooth, then add to the batter.

  4. Add your chosen flavoring and mix until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a flat tin pan and bake until golden.

  2. Let the cake cool, then cut into diamond shapes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add air and lift to the batter.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb, giving a tender, delicate texture compared with flour alone.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aid aeration and add sweetness and browning.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that gives the cake its rise. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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