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Dessert

Hickory Nut Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, vanilla, and chopped hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hickory Nut 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the sweet milk, flour, baking powder, and chopped hickory nuts.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites and vanilla flavoring last.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a square pan or a round tube pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. This cake can be served plain or with icing.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it holds air bubbles and adds richness and tender texture.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming with butter for texture.
Hickory nut meats
Add nutty flavor and a firm, chewy bite throughout the crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites; stirring vigorously would deflate them and produce a denser, flatter cake.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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