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Dessert

Sally Luns

A yeast‑leavened cake made with milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sally Luns

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. In a pan, combine warm milk and yeast.

  2. Add enough flour to create a thick batter and cover to rise for 2 hours.

  3. Mix in sugar and beaten eggs.

Shape and bake

  1. Rub butter into the flour and make a dough slightly softer than bread dough.

  2. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.

  3. Shape into cakes and place on baking tins.

  4. Allow to rise, then bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. 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 + beertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the batter and dough structure that holds the cakes together.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough while setting during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives a richer crumb.
Milk
Provides moisture and feeds the yeast during the initial rise.

The step that matters

Rising the batter. The batter must rise fully for two hours because yeast gas creates the open texture. Under-proofing leaves the cakes dense, while the rest period lets the gluten relax so the shaped cakes keep their form.

“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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