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Dessert

Feather Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, and flavoring.

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

Feather 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 batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until well mixed.

  2. Add the milk and beat until very light.

  3. Weigh out the flour.

  4. Add one-third of the flour to the mixture, beating well.

  5. Separate the eggs.

  6. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  7. Beat the egg yolks until creamy.

  8. Add the yolks to the mixture.

  9. Add the whites to the mixture.

  10. Add the remaining flour, beating well after each addition.

  11. Stir in the baking powder and flavoring.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased cake pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for thirty minutes.

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

Eggs
Whites trap air for lightness, and yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Builds the cake's structure once mixed and set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated creamed base.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites gently. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that makes the cake light. Folding them in gently rather than beating hard keeps that air from collapsing, so the cake rises well.

“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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