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Dessert

One, Two, Three, Four Cake

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, spices, liquor, and optional fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, Two, Three, Four 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift and measure the flour.

  3. Count and break the eggs.

  4. Grease your cake pans and line them with paper.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy, then gradually add the sugar.

  2. Mix in spices and liquor, then add the milk.

  3. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the baking soda and cream of tartar with the flour.

  5. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture, mixing thoroughly.

  6. If using fruit, add it last before pouring the batter into the pans.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, tenderizes the crumb, and helps the crust brown.
Eggs
Bind the batter, add moisture, and help set the structure as the cake bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it mixes and bakes evenly.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Beat the butter until creamy, then gradually add the sugar.. Beating butter and sugar together traps tiny air pockets in the fat. These expand in the oven and give the cake a lighter texture. Adding the sugar gradually helps it dissolve and blend evenly.

“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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