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Dessert

Sandwich Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, leavening, lemon, and filled with jelly, custard, or coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Sandwich Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat the egg yolks into the mixture.

  4. Add the flour and baking powder.

  5. If using, mix the cream of tartar with the flour.

  6. Add the baking soda to the milk.

  7. Combine all ingredients.

  8. Add a few drops of lemon extract.

  9. Beat the mixture well for a few minutes.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into four flat baking tins.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Once cooled, fill with jelly, custard, or moistened desiccated coconut mixed with beaten egg whites.

  4. Ice the top.

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. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites add lift and a light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps trap air and gives sweetness and golden browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to add lift and help browning.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well for a few minutes. Thorough beating mixes the leavening evenly and builds air into the batter. Uneven mixing can leave pockets of leavener, causing uneven rise or a coarse texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, flour, milk, cream, coconut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, milk, cream, coconut. 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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