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Dessert

Coen Starch Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, cornstarch, sugar, butter, egg whites, sweet milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Coen Starch Cakes

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg whites and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Gives the cake a tender, fine crumb by diluting the gluten from the flour.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and helps the cake rise evenly.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that leavens the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.. Adding dry ingredients in portions and stirring just until smooth keeps the batter evenly mixed without overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cake tough.

“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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