Name: Walnut Cake
Ingredients: 4 egg whites; 1½ cups sugar; ½ cup butter; 1 cup milk; 2 cups all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; ¼ teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup walnuts (chopped)

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 ↓

Walnut Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly.
Add the stiffly beaten egg whites and then the milk.
Sift the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda together twice.
Add the sifted mixture to the batter, mixing well.
Fold in the chopped walnuts.

Bake

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for forty minutes or more.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 give the cake lightness and structure as it sets.
All-purpose flour: Its proteins set during baking to form the cake's main structure.
Butter: Creamed with sugar to trap air, adding tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar: Creamed with butter to aid aeration and add sweetness and browning.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the batter and stabilises the whipped egg whites.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the chopped walnuts. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the batter. Overmixing deflates it and can make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Pistachiofits about as well
Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

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