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Dessert

White Cake

A light white cake with a lemon filling made from grated rind, juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

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.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites and flavor to taste.

  6. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the lemon filling

  1. For the lemon filling, combine the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, water, sugar, egg, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Let the filling cool before spreading between the cake layers and frosting the top.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiffness, they trap air that lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, making the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a light, fluffy batter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring instead of gently folding knocks out the air whipped into the egg whites, so the cake bakes up dense rather than light and airy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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