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Dessert

French Cake

A light cake made with egg whites, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, and flavored with lemon and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

French 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

Make the batter

  1. Add sugar, creamed butter, milk, and baking soda; mix well.

  2. Sift flour and cream of tartar together four times, then add to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg yolks and flavor with lemon and vanilla just before baking.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

  2. Beat the 2 egg whites until stiff and spread on the cooled cake for frosting.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whites trap air for lift and structure; yolks add richness and tenderness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the cake's airy crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, even batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas and help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg yolks and flavor just before baking. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the batter, which gives the cake its lift. Baking soon after folding keeps that trapped air and the rising reaction from fading before the cake sets in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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