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Dessert

White Cream Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking soda, sour cream, and egg whites, flavored with orange or rose.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Cream 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).

  2. Mix the baking soda into the sour cream.

  3. Sift the cream of tartar into the flour.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the flour mixture and sour cream to the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until just combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a loaf pan.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure when folded in.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creams with butter to create air pockets and adds sweetness and browning.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently and only until just combined.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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