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Dessert

Standard Cake

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and salt.

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 ↓

Standard Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix and sift flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Cream the butter, then gradually add the sugar and cream thoroughly.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks until thick and light.

  4. Alternately add the milk and sifted flour.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites while adding the last amount of flour.

Bake

  1. Pour into a buttered and floured pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 35 minutes for layer cake, 45 to 60 minutes for loaf cake, or 30 to 35 minutes for individual cakes.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to add sweetness and help build a light, aerated batter.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and structure.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes softly.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that lightens the cake. Overmixing or deflating them with vigorous stirring knocks out that air, leaving a denser crumb.

“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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