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Dessert

A Dutch Cake

A yeast‑leavened cake made with eggs, flour, butter, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

A Dutch 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

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Mix the egg yolks one by one with the flour.

  3. Add enough lukewarm milk to achieve a paste-like consistency.

  4. Stir in the melted butter, sugar, and a little yeast.

  5. Work the mixture for 30 minutes.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Rise and bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered mold.

  2. Let it rise slightly in a warm place.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they trap air and give the cake a light, airy crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and structure, binding the flour into a tender batter.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the crumb feel moist.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, lifting the batter during its rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring them in too hard knocks out the air they hold, so the cake rises less and turns dense. Fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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