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Dessert

Walnut Cake

A steamed cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, water, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Walnut Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream butter and sugar together.

  2. Add beaten egg yolks and cold water.

  3. Mix in flour and whipped egg whites alternately.

  4. Fold in walnut pieces.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour mixture into greased mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the cake lift and an airy, light crumb; yolks add richness.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds fat for a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream with butter to hold air bubbles.
English walnut kernels
Add crunch, nutty flavor, and some fat to the crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in walnut pieces and whipped whites gently. Folding keeps the air trapped in the whipped egg whites, so the cake stays light instead of dense after steaming.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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