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Dessert

Perfection Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Perfection 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  3. Dissolve the corn-starch in the milk.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the dissolved corn-starch mixture to the butter and sugar, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and then fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  4. Avoid beating the mixture in a tin dish.

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

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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 egg whites trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Creams with butter and adds sweetness, helping the cake brown and stay moist.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Corn-starch
Softens the crumb, giving a finer, more tender texture than flour alone.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense, flat cake.

“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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