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Dessert

White Pound Cake

A dense cake made with equal parts sugar, butter, flour, egg whites, blanched almonds, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Pound Cake

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Pound 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 part of the flour, the fruit, and the remaining flour.

  3. Fold in the egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two large loaf pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (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

Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, traps air that helps it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Egg whites
Folded into the batter, they trap air that lifts the cake and helps it set.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that leavens the cake. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a dense, heavy crumb, so fold gently until just combined.

“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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