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 ↓
Tricolour Layer 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.
Make the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, butter, baking powder, flour, and milk until smooth.
Divide the batter into three parts.
Flavour and colour
Flavour one part with lemon essence and leave it white.
Colour the second part pink with cochineal and flavour with strawberry essence.
Colour the third part brown with spices.
Bake and assemble
Pour each batter into three round shallow tins of the same size.
Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Once cooled, stack the layers together with icing.
Ice and decorate the top as desired.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Strawberry + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Bind the batter and give the layers structure as they set in the oven.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as the batter sets.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the layers brown and stay tender.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb and flavour.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture, loosening the batter and keeping the crumb soft.
The step that matters
Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. The batter is split into three thin shallow layers, which bake quickly and can dry out fast. Checking early with a toothpick prevents overbaking, while underbaking leaves the centre raw and sunken as it cools.
Swap the strawberry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, flour, lemon, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Strawberrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, lemon, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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