Name: White Cakes
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; 1 cup fine white sugar; 1 pound very fine Italian flour

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 ↓

White Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

½ cup butter
1 cup fine white sugar
1 pound very fine Italian flour

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

Mix butter with sugar in a basin.
Add flour and work into a paste.
Shape the paste into fingers or flat cakes.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
Serve hot, sprinkled with honey, preserve, or sugar.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Butter + sugartop 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

Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the paste a tender, short texture.
Fine white sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the paste brown lightly in the oven.
Very fine italian flour: Provides the structure that holds the paste together once shaped and 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.