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Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light lemon-flavored cake made with sweet milk, flour, baking powder, sugar, egg whites, butter, and optional cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Delicate Cake

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Delicate 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, flour, baking powder, lemon extract, and sugar.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Cream the butter and gradually add sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Mix in the egg whites gently.

  4. Fold in the flour and baking powder, and cornstarch if using.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that helps the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives a tender, rich crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps create a fine, tender texture.
Sweet milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter moisture.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour and baking powder. Gentle folding keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Vigorous stirring develops gluten and deflates the batter, which makes the cake dense and heavy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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