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Dessert

One Egg Cake

A simple cake made with one egg, butter, sugar, flour, milk, and baking powder, topped with fig filling and frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg, salt, baking powder, and milk, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is soft.

  4. Pour the batter into patty tins.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Once cool, cut each cake in half.

  3. Fill with fig filling and frost the top.

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. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 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
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the cake rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter come together smoothly.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter is soft. Adding flour gradually and stopping once the batter is soft helps avoid overworking the gluten, which would make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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