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Dessert

White Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Cake

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 ↓

White Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the milk gradually, mixing well.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  6. Add flavoring to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for about 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + eggtop 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
Adds fat that gives the cake a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, traps air that lightens the texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that gives the cake lift and a light texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. The whipped whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Stirring hard or too long deflates them, leaving a dense, flat cake. Fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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