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Dessert

White Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, almond or lemon juice, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, mixing well.

  3. Alternately add the milk and sifted flour with baking powder.

  4. Flavor with almond or lemon juice.

  5. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake in three shallow pans of the same size.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture by coating the flour and creaming to trap air.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the crust brown while keeping the crumb tender.
Egg whites
Whipped foam traps air, helping the cake rise and giving it a light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter becomes smooth and cohesive.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.. Egg whites hold air as foam, which lifts the cake. Stirring vigorously or overmixing knocks out that air and leaves a dense, flat cake, so fold slowly with a spatula.

“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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