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Dessert

Runaway Cake

A simple cake made with egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour.

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

Runaway 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 the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg and mix in the sugar, butter, and milk.

  3. Add the cream of tartar and baking soda, then stir well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the batter is slightly thicker than pancake batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden.

  2. Serve hot with butter for breakfast or tea.

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. 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
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter hold together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidic powder that reacts with baking soda to produce gas for rising.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, lifting the cake.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and sets as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins and starches set when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the finished cake.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour must be added slowly so the batter reaches the right thickness; too much flour makes the cake dense and dry, while too little gives a thin, flat result.

“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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