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Dessert

Surprise Cake

A simple cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, milk, butter, and frosted with boiled dates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Surprise Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix sugar, flour, and baking powder.

  3. In a saucepan, heat the milk and butter until boiling.

  4. Combine the boiling milk mixture with the dry ingredients.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in two layers until golden brown.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes with boiled frosting mixed with chopped dates.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + datestop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Add structure and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the cake rise and lighten.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a more tender crumb.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

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