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Dessert

Sunshine Cake

A light cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, salt, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sunshine Cake

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sunshine 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).

  2. Separate the eggs, placing the whites in a mixing bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites to a foam, then add the cream of tartar and whip until very stiff.

  2. Fold in the sugar, egg yolks, and flavoring.

  3. Gently fold in the flour until just mixed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a cake pan and bake for 45 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped whites trap air to give the cake its light, airy structure, and yolks add richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking to hold the cake's structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping them whip to a stable, stiff foam.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites. Egg whites must be whipped until very stiff without deflating, since they supply most of the cake's lift. Any trace of yolk or fat in the bowl will stop them from foaming properly, so separate the eggs carefully and use a clean bowl. Folding gently afterward keeps the air in the batter.

“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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