Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Angel Food 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
Beat the egg whites until they are half beaten.
Add the cream of tartar and continue beating until you can invert the bowl.
Sift the sugar and flour separately five times.
Make the batter
Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites, beating lightly.
Add the flour in the same gradual manner.
Mix in the vanilla extract.
Bake
Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes.
Increase the heat and bake for an additional 35 to 40 minutes.
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.
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,241 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,301 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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
- Whipped into a foam that gives the cake its airy structure.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
- All-purpose flour
- Provides light structure so the cake sets around the foam.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the egg whites, helping the foam hold its volume.
- Vanilla extract
- Adds aroma to the finished cake.
The step that matters
Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites, beating lightly.. Adding sugar slowly and beating gently lets it dissolve into the foam and stabilize it. Adding it all at once or overbeating can deflate the foam and leave a dense, coarse cake.
Swap the vanilla
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits about as well
- Vanillathe original
- Figfits less well
- Strawberryfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, flour. 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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