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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light, airy cake made with egg whites, butter, sugar, flour, milk, and baking powder, optionally enriched with corn starch.

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

Delicate 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  2. Stir in the milk until well combined.

  3. If using corn starch, substitute half the flour with it for a better texture.

  4. Pour the batter into square tins for jelly cakes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, cut into slices and fill with lemon honey if desired.

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. Milk + corntop 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 a froth to add lift and a light, airy crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Granulated sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and add sweetness and light browning.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour and baking powder to the butter mixture. Adding dry ingredients in portions and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing, which would develop too much gluten and make the cake tough and dense.

“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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