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Dessert

Baking Cake

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, and optional fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baking 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. Grease the pans with lard.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until soft and creamy.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and foamy.

  3. Sift salt and baking powder with the flour.

  4. If using fruit, roll it in flour and add it last.

  5. Mix the batter in an earthen bowl with a wooden spoon.

Bake

  1. Bake the cake as soon as it is mixed.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Beaten eggs add air and structure, helping the cake rise and set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, creamy texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Bake as soon as the batter is mixed. Baking powder starts releasing gas once it is wet, so waiting lets bubbles escape and can leave the cake flatter and denser.

“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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