Skip to main content
Dessert

Diet-bread Cake

A sweet cake made with water, sugar, eggs, flour, baked in a 400°F oven.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Diet-bread 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. Boil the water and loaf sugar together, then skim off any impurities.

  2. Beat the eggs very finely, leaving out half the whites.

Make the batter

  1. Pour the boiled sugar into the beaten eggs and whisk for at least 15 minutes.

  2. Gently stir in the fine flour until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease square tins and line them with white paper, filling them three-quarters full.

  2. Sprinkle loaf sugar on top and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Once baked, remove the cakes from the molds while hot.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Whisked into the batter to trap air and give the cake its structure as they set.
Fine flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its starches set in the oven.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a fine, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs and sugar. Whisking the boiled sugar into the eggs for a long time traps air that leavens the batter. Under-whisking leaves a dense cake, so the batter needs to be well aerated before the flour is folded in gently to keep that air.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes