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Dessert

Princess Cake

A light cake made with butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg whites, flavoring, and baking powder, baked at 400°F.

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 ↓

Princess Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  3. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  4. Incorporate the flavoring and the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and finish

  1. Line a round cake tin with greased paper and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes.

  3. Once cooled, invert the cake and cover the bottom and sides with white 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy crumb.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Creaming with butter helps incorporate air and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Incorporate the flavoring and the beaten egg whites gently. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air in the beaten whites. Vigorous mixing deflates the foam, which leads to a denser, less risen 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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