Name: Easy Cake
Ingredients: 1½ cups flour; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1 egg; 3 teaspoons melted butter; milk (enough to fill a tea cup); ½ teaspoon baking soda; flavoring to taste

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 ↓

Easy 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and baking powder together.
Beat the egg in a tea cup.
Add the melted butter and milk to the cup.
Stir in the baking soda and flavoring.
Combine the wet and dry ingredients until smooth.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 25–30 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together738 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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: Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Egg: Binds the batter and helps give the cake its structure and richness.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the heat, helping the cake rise and become light.
Baking soda: Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas, adding lift to the batter.
Melted butter: Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the crumb.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while adding tenderness.

“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.