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 ↓
Newport Tea-cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the batter
Dissolve the cream of tartar in the milk.
Melt the butter and beat it thoroughly with the eggs and sugar.
Mix this with part of the flour and half of the milk.
Dissolve the baking soda in the remaining milk and quickly stir it into the mixture with the remaining flour.
Bake
Bake in a bread pan for 20 to 30 minutes in a hot oven (400°F or 200°C), then reduce the heat.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness, helping the cake set and hold its crumb.
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the batter.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
The step that matters
Stir in the baking soda quickly. Baking soda reacts with the acid as soon as it is combined, releasing gas that lifts the batter. Delaying the stirring or the bake lets much of that gas escape, leaving a flatter cake.
“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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