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Dessert

Angel Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Angel Cake

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 Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Sift together the flour, sugar, and cream of tartar five or six times.

  3. Fold the sifted mixture gradually into the beaten egg whites.

  4. Add the almond extract and mix gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into an ungreased pan.

  2. Bake for 50 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. 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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).

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 provide the light, airy structure of the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Bread flour
Provides gluten and starch that set the cake's crumb once baked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping them whip to a stronger, more stable foam.

The step that matters

Fold the sifted mixture gradually into the beaten egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating the foam makes the cake dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, bread, flour, cream):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, bread, flour, cream. 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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