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Dessert

Nicest Sweet Cakes

A cake made with eggs, sugar, baking soda, buttermilk, lard, flour, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Nicest Sweet Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk and add it to the egg mixture.

  4. Work in the lard and enough flour to form a soft dough.

  5. Add flavoring to taste before baking.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough as desired and bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the dough as it bakes.
Buttermilk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens the dough and keeps the cakes tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together while baking.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it fully in the buttermilk before mixing spreads the reaction evenly, so the cakes rise uniformly rather than in pockets.

“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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