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Baking

Diet-bread Cake

A cake made by boiling water and loaf sugar, mixing with eggs and flour, baked in a preheated oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Diet-bread Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

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 sugar syrup

  1. Boil the water and loaf sugar together, then skim off any impurities.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Beat the eggs very finely, leaving out half the whites.

Make the batter

  1. Pour the boiled sugar into the eggs and whisk for at least 15 minutes.

  2. Gently stir in the fine flour until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease square tins and line them with white paper, filling them three-quarters full.

  2. Sprinkle loaf sugar on top of the batter.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done, then remove from the molds while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Whisked with sugar syrup to trap air, giving the cake its light, open structure.
Fine flour
Provides the starch and gluten-forming structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and, dissolved into a syrup, helps the batter hold its whipped volume.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs and sugar syrup. The batter depends on air beaten into the eggs. Whisking for the full time while the syrup is still warm builds a stable foam, and gently folding in the flour keeps that air from collapsing, which would make the cake dense.

“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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