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Dessert

Diet Bread Cake

A light cake made with flour, sugar, eggs, and water, baked in a warm oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Diet Bread 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.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the water and dissolve the sugar in it.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks until combined.

  3. Pour the sugar mixture into the egg yolks and whisk quickly until cool, about 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the sifted flour until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Line square tins with white paper and fill them three-quarters full with the batter.

  2. Sift a little sugar over the top and bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. While hot, remove the cakes from the molds.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Eggs
Egg yolks provide structure and richness, setting the crumb as the cake bakes.
Lump sugar
Dissolved in hot water, the sugar sweetens the batter and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Sifted flour
Flour forms the cake's main structure once it is mixed in and baked.

The step that matters

Whisking the sugar syrup into the yolks. Pouring the hot syrup in too slowly or whisking too little can let the yolks cook unevenly or the batter separate. Whisking quickly keeps the mixture smooth and evenly aerated as it cools.

“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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