Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
A Delicious Cream-cake and Sweet Rusks
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the batter
Crumble the butter into the flour and mix thoroughly.
Add the sugar, salt, and candied citron or orange rind.
Mix the sour cream with the whisked eggs, then add the sour cream and egg mixture to the batter.
Blend the carbonate of soda with twice the quantity of sugar and flour.
Bake and finish
Sift the carbonate mixture into the buttered molds.
Fill the molds two-thirds full.
Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 45 minutes.
While the cake is hot, pull apart the cake with forks.
Return the cake pieces to the oven to crisp.
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 + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and carrying flavour.
- Fine flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and acidity, which tenderises the crumb and reacts with the soda.
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lifts the cake.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
The step that matters
Sifting the carbonate mixture into the molds. Soda must be evenly distributed and blended with flour and sugar so it reacts uniformly with the sour cream's acid; clumps cause patchy rising and bitter spots.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, cream, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, cream, egg. 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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