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Sandwich Cake

A cake made from eggs, sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, cornstarch, and water, baked and sliced for filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sandwich 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).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the butter and mix well.

  3. Sift together the baking powder, flour, and cornstarch, then fold into the egg mixture.

  4. Stir in the water until combined.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow cake tin and bake until golden.

  2. Once cooled, cut the cake in half and add your desired filling.

  3. Optionally, ice the cake if you like.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Whipped with the eggs for volume and adds sweetness and golden browning.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Cornstarch
Lightens the crumb and yields a more tender texture than flour alone.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour mixture. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs. Overmixing deflates the batter and makes the cake dense and tough once baked.

“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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