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Dessert

Plain Cup Cake

A simple cup cake made with butter, sugar, flour, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and optional lemon or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain Cup 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 batter

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

  2. Beat the butter until light, then gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat until creamy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and milk, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  5. Flavor with lemon or nutmeg as desired.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into loaf or sheet pans.

  2. Bake for 40 minutes if in loaves, or 20 minutes if in sheets, until the top looks well done.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold together as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acidic component that works with the baking soda to help the cake rise and stay tender.

The step that matters

Beating the butter and sugar until creamy. Creaming works air into the fat, and that trapped air helps lift the cake. Beating too little leaves a dense cake, while the leavening reaction depends on the acid and soda being evenly mixed through the batter.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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