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Dessert

One-egg Cake

A simple cake made with one egg, butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, chocolate, and a stiff beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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One-egg 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 ↓

One-egg 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine melted butter and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolk and milk, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and ground chocolate.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  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 white
Beaten stiff and folded in, it traps air that lifts the cake and gives it a light crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise and become airy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Stirring vigorously knocks out the air bubbles whipped into the egg white, so the cake rises less and turns dense. Fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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