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Dessert

Simple White Cake

A light, fluffy white cake made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, milk, and a hint of extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Simple White Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat the yolks of the 3 eggs and the white of 1 egg separately, then combine with the milk.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the creamed butter and sugar, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Sift the baking powder into the flour, add the pinch of salt, and gradually incorporate into the mixture while stirring continuously.

  5. Add the extract and mix well.

Bake and finish

  1. Divide the batter into two layers and bake until golden.

  2. Frost as 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.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add tenderness and richness.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure; the white adds lift and binding.

The step that matters

Incorporating the flour and baking powder. Adding the flour too quickly or overmixing develops gluten, making the cake tough. Gentle, gradual mixing keeps the crumb tender while the baking powder still lifts the batter.

“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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