Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Mock Angel 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
Heat the milk to boiling point.
Sift the flour, fruit sugar, baking powder, and salt together four to five times.
Stir the sifted ingredients into the hot milk.
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.
Bake
Do not flavor the cake or grease the pan, but you can flavor the icing.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes at 350°F (175°C).
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Beaten stiff, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
- Fruit sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown lightly while baking.
The step that matters
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the air trapped in the stiffly beaten whites. Stirring or beating deflates them, which leads to a dense, flat 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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