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Dessert

Starch Cake

A layered cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, cornstarch, baking powder, and folded egg whites, topped with a sugar syrup filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Starch Cake

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.

Prepare the cake batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, and baking powder.

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

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into layers in prepared cake pans.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil 1 cup of sugar with water until it reaches a string stage.

  2. Beat 2 egg whites to stiff peaks and pour the hot sugar syrup over them, mixing well. Add flavoring to the filling 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake crumb.
Cornstarch
Tenderizes the crumb, giving a softer, finer texture than flour alone.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy, light structure to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize it while creaming with butter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the cake bakes up dense; fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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