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Dessert

White Cake

A sweet yeast cake with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, cream, candied peel, caraway seeds, nutmeg, brandy, rose water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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White Cake

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

White 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 the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Add all other ingredients to the butter, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the fresh yeast last.

  5. Let the cake rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered tin.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Once out of the oven, brush the top with beaten egg white and sift sugar over it.

  4. Let it stand at the mouth of the oven to harden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + carawaytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps trap air when beaten until creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning on the crust.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Fresh yeast
Produces gas that makes the cake rise before baking.

The step that matters

Stir in the fresh yeast last. Yeast is alive and works quickly, so adding it last after the other ingredients are mixed keeps it from being overworked or losing activity before the rise.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, cream, lemon, caraway):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, cream, lemon, caraway. 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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