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Dessert

Mountain Pound Cake

A moist pound cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, milk, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Mountain Pound 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

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

  2. Sift the flour with the cream of tartar and baking soda.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks to the butter and sugar mixture.

  3. Mix in the flour and milk alternately.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten to stiff peaks, lighten its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake once it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and stabilizes the whites.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to stiff peaks. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; vigorous stirring deflates it and leads to a denser cake.

“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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