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Dessert

Four Egg Cake

A cake made with egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, and optional raisin or pecan filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Four Egg 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar until light. Add the butter and mix well. Stir in the milk and combine.

  3. In another bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the filling, cook 1½ cups sugar with a little water until it reaches the "hair" stage. Pour the hot sugar over the 2 beaten egg whites and beat until cool. Stir in the chopped raisins or pecans and use as filling.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 yolks
Add richness and tenderness, and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to make the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring hard knocks out the air bubbles whipped into the egg whites, so the cake rises less and turns dense. Fold gently with a spatula to keep the batter light.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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