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Dessert

Diet Bread Cake

A sweet cake made with water, sugar, egg yolks, flour, and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Diet Bread Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the water and lump sugar together until dissolved.

  2. Whisk the egg yolks.

  3. Pour the sugar mixture into the whisked yolks.

  4. Whisk until cold, about 15 minutes.

  5. Stir in the sifted flour until well combined.

Fill and bake

  1. Line square tins with white paper.

  2. Fill them three-quarters full with the batter.

  3. Sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  4. Bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C).

Finish

  1. Remove the cakes from the molds while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 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
Yolks add richness and, when whisked, trap air that helps the cake rise and set.
Flour
Sifted flour gives the batter structure as its starch sets during baking.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the cake and keeps the crumb soft and moist.

The step that matters

Whisk until cold. Whisking the yolks with the sugar syrup until cold builds a stable foam of trapped air, which gives the cake its rise. If the mixture is under-whisked, the crumb turns out dense.

“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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