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Dessert

Bangor Cake

A sweet, buttery cake with flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flavoring.

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 ↓

Bangor Cake

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Beat in the eggs and flavor to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into baking sheets.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

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. Milk + flourtop 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for structure and sweetness, and helps the cake brown.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure, moisture and richness, binding the batter as it sets.
Cream of tartar
Acidic leavening partner that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients gradually. Adding flour in portions and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough. Overmixing after the flour goes in can also knock out the air and leavening gas that give the cake its lift.

“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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