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Dessert

One Egg Cake

A light cake made with butter, sugar, one egg yolk, flour, baking powder, milk, egg whites, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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 the butter in a warm bowl.

  2. Slowly add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Whip the yolk of the egg and add it to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together three times.

  5. Add the flour and milk alternately to the butter mixture.

  6. Finally, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and the flavoring.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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.

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. Flour + milktop 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for lightness.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff and folded in, they add air and lift for a light crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with liquid and heated.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes softly.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten stiff. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; stirring vigorously knocks it out, leaving a flatter, denser cake.

“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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