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Dessert

Perfection Cake

A layered cake with butter, flour, milk, egg whites, vanilla, nut filling, and a powdered sugar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,385 recipes. Both carry p-vinylguaiacol, which smells spicy, fruity. The science ↓

Perfection Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  3. Wash the butter in cold water.

  4. Cream the butter with the powdered sugar until light.

  5. Add the vanilla extract.

  6. Alternately mix in the flour and milk.

  7. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites without over-stirring.

  8. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans and smooth the tops.

  9. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the granulated sugar and water until it threads.

  2. Slowly pour the syrup into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Add the vanilla and nuts.

Assemble and glaze

  1. Spread the filling over one cake layer.

  2. Top with the second layer.

  3. Mix the powdered sugar, water, and strawberry juice in a saucepan and heat until lukewarm.

  4. Pour over the cake.

  5. Leave the second glaze white.

  6. Decorate the top with candied fruit and nuts.

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. Vanilla + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,385 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-vinylguaiacol (spicy, fruity).

  2. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 crumb together.
Egg whites
Whipped foam adds lightness and helps the cake rise and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Butter
Fat that tenderises the crumb and adds richness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and creams with butter to trap air for a finer texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air in a fragile foam that gives the cake its lift. Stirring too much knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense and flat. Fold gently, only until just combined.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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