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Dessert

White Loaf Cake

A light cake made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, egg yolks, powdered sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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White Loaf 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 Loaf Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then mix until combined.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Pour the batter into a small square cake pan.

  6. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, beat the egg yolks with powdered sugar and flavoring until light and stiff.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Beaten whites add lift and structure, while yolks enrich the icing.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, browned crust.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg white foam holds the air that lifts the cake. Vigorous stirring deflates it, leading to a dense, flat loaf.

“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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