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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light cake made with egg whites, butter, sugar, flour, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Delicate Cake

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 ↓

Delicate 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Mix the baking powder with the flour, then add to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the milk until well combined.

  4. For a variation, substitute half the flour with corn starch.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into square tins and bake until golden.

  2. Once cooled, cut into slices and fill with lemon honey if desired.

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. 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. Flour + milktop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they trap air that lightens the cake's structure.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich in flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming with butter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it mixes evenly.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar together traps air in the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives it a tender texture. Under-creaming leaves a denser crumb.

“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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