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Dessert

Sunshine Cake

A light, airy cake made with egg whites, yolks, butter, sugar, flour, vanilla, lemon juice, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Sunshine Cake

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sunshine Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Sift the flour and sugar together twice.

  3. Beat the egg yolks thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until half beaten, then add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff.

  2. Gently stir in the sugar, then the beaten yolks, followed by the vanilla and lemon juice.

  3. Fold in the sifted flour mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased tube pan.

  2. Bake for 40 to 50 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.

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

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

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

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

  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 + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the cake its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness while helping bind the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking to form the cake's crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, flavor and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour mixture. Stirring too hard or too long knocks air out of the whipped egg whites, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light and airy. Fold gently, just until no dry flour shows.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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