Skip to main content
Dessert

Pound Cake

A sweet cake made with equal parts butter, flour, sugar, and eggs, flavored to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pound Cake

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs separately.

  3. Add the egg whites to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Sift the flour and add it gradually to the mixture.

  5. Add flavoring to taste and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 and richness, and when creamed with sugar it traps air that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the batter bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the butter hold air when beaten until creamy.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and the whites whipped in add lift to the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs separately before adding the whites. Beating the eggs separately keeps the whites' air intact so the cake rises well. Folding the batter gently after adding flour also helps avoid deflating it.

“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.

More pound cake recipes

White 28Coconut 27Ginger 27German 18Citron 17Molasses 17 See all 518 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipesTapioca PuddingTapioca Pudding317 recipes