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Dessert

Vinegar Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, vinegar, and sultanas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Vinegar 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the milk, baking soda, and vinegar.

  5. Pour the milk mixture into the butter mixture and stir thoroughly.

  6. Gradually add the flour, then mix in the sultanas or peel.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking tin well and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the vinegar to release carbon dioxide, helping the cake rise.
Vinegar
Acidifies the milk and reacts with baking soda to produce lift and a light crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb while creaming with the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and vinegar mixture to the batter. The baking soda and vinegar react as soon as they are combined, releasing gas. Stirring the mixture in promptly, and not letting it sit, keeps that lift in the batter for the oven to set.

“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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