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Dessert

Angel Food Cake

A light, airy cake made from egg whites, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, and lemon or peach extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Sift together the sugar and flour five times.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the cream of tartar to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Fold the sifted flour and sugar into the egg whites gently.

  4. Pour the batter into an ungreased round tube pan.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake for 1 to 2 hours, gradually increasing the heat the last half hour.

  2. Check the cake's progress by opening the oven; it won't affect the baking.

  3. Run a knife around the cake.

  4. Turn it upside down to cool.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 to foam, they form the airy structure that lifts and sets the cake.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set during baking, giving the light crumb enough structure to hold its shape.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping the foam stay stable and hold its volume.

The step that matters

Folding the flour and sugar into the egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating the batter causes the cake to lose volume and become dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, cream. 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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