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Dessert

Angel Food

A light, airy cake made from whipped egg whites, flour, powdered sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Angel Food

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the flour and cream of tartar together 6 to 10 times.

  2. Whip the egg whites until very stiff.

  3. Gradually add the powdered sugar while continuing to whip until fully incorporated.

  4. Add the flavoring and gently fold in the flour mixture until just combined.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into ungreased angel food cake pans, filling them almost to the top.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  3. Invert the cake to cool.

  4. If it doesn't drop out when cool, run a knife around the edge and gently shake.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 into a stiff foam that traps air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves into the whites, stabilizing the foam.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping them whip to a more stable, stiff foam.

The step that matters

Fold the flour mixture in gently. Folding just until combined keeps the air trapped in the whipped egg whites. Overmixing deflates the foam, which leads to a dense, heavy 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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