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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the batter
Beat the egg yolks with half the sugar and the butter until creamy, then mix in the egg whites.
Sift together the flour, corn starch, and baking powder.
Add the sifted mixture to the egg mixture.
Stir in the sweet milk and flavoring.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,927 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- Eggs
- Provide structure and richness, and the whites add lift when mixed into the batter.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while baking.
- Flour
- Gives the cake its main structure as the proteins set during baking.
- Corn starch
- Makes the crumb lighter and more tender than flour alone.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
The step that matters
Add the sifted dry mixture to the egg mixture. Adding the flour, corn starch, and baking powder gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs and butter. Overmixing develops gluten and deflates the batter, which leads to a dense cake.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, corn, flour, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, corn, flour, milk. 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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