Skip to main content
Dessert

Composition Cake

A cake made with eggs, flour, sugar, butter, milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Composition 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, beat the sugar, butter, and egg yolks together for a long time.

  2. Add the milk and part of the flour, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

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

  5. Incorporate the egg whites beaten to stiff peaks gently into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-40 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whipped whites lighten the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb while creaming with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and aids aeration when creamed with sugar.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds acidity that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cake rise and brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Mixing them in gently keeps that air from deflating, which would leave a dense 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes