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Dessert

White Layer Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with egg whites, powdered sugar, milk, flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Layer Cake

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

White Layer Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine 3½ cups of flour with cornstarch and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, beating until smooth.

Fold and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the cake's structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, even texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter becomes smooth.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air that makes the cake light. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so fold gently with a spatula to keep the batter airy.

“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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