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Dessert

White Cake

A light, airy cake made with sugar, water, egg yolks, egg whites, potato flour, Vienna flour, and a hint of mace or ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Cake

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

White Cake

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 syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water, then simmer for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the yolks in a bowl and beat well.

  3. Beat the yolks until creamy, about 15 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Sift and warm the flours, then beat the egg whites to a foam.

  2. Gradually add the egg whites to the yolk mixture, alternating with the flours.

Bake

  1. Oil and sugar the mold, and pin a band of paper around the top.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (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.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + macetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 to a foam, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Beaten with the hot syrup, they add richness and a creamy, tender crumb.
Potato flour
A light starch that gives a delicate, tender crumb compared with wheat flour.
Vienna flour
Adds flour structure to help the batter set as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the yolk mixture. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to a stable foam and handled gently. Overbeating or deflating them while alternating with the flours makes the cake dense and flat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, potato, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, potato, flour. 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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