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Dessert

White Cake

A light, airy cake made with egg whites, butter, powdered sugar, milk, baking soda, and flour.

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

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 ↓

White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the sweet milk and baking soda to the mixture.

  3. Stir in half of the beaten egg whites and 2 cups of flour.

  4. Fold in the remaining egg whites and the last cup of flour mixed with cream of tartar or baking powder.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two loaf pans.

  2. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam that traps air and gives the cake its light, open structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to hold air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Cream of tartar or baking powder
Acid or leavening agent that helps the batter rise in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise and brown.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring hard deflates the foam, and the cake bakes up dense instead of light.

“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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