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Dessert

White Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg whites, baking powder, and flavored with bitter almond or lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Cake

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Sift the flour three times and mix in the baking powder.

  3. Alternately add the flour mixture and milk to the creamed mixture, mixing well.

  4. Gently fold in the egg whites until fully incorporated.

  5. Add flavoring with either bitter almond or lemon extract.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with butter to aid aeration and adds sweetness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes airy.
Egg whites
Fold in to add lift and structure, producing a light, open texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter becomes smooth and cohesive.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the egg whites. Whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense, heavy cake.

“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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