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Dessert

Angel Food Cake

A light, airy cake made from beaten egg whites, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, and almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Angel Food Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the flour four times and the sugar once; measure and combine.

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy, then add the cream of tartar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gently fold in the sifted flour and sugar mixture, then add the almond flavoring.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into an ungreased Van Dusen pan.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 1 hour, placing a pie pan of water on the lower rack.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Egg and flour 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 foam, they trap air and provide the cake's light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped whites, giving a fine, tender crumb.
Pastry flour
Provides low-protein structure that holds the airy foam without making the cake tough.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the whites, stabilizing the foam so it holds stiff peaks during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and sugar. Overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the cake will bake up dense and flat. Fold gently, just until no dry streaks remain.

“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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