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Dessert

Walnut Cake

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

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

Walnut 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).

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

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

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the water.

  5. Fold in the walnut meats.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 45 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter texture.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Walnut meats
Add crunch, nutty flavor and some fat to the batter.

The step that matters

Alternating the dry ingredients with the water. Adding flour in portions alternately with liquid keeps the batter smooth and well combined. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, meat. 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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