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Dessert

Lazy Daisy Cake

A simple cake made with flour, milk, sugar, butter, egg, baking powder, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Lazy Daisy Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix sugar, egg, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Sift the flour and measure 1 cup.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the flour with the milk and melted butter, bringing it to a boil.

  2. Slowly add the flour mixture to the other mixture.

  3. Stir in the vanilla and pour into a baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Builds the cake's structure as its starch and proteins set during baking.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter hold together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates and the batter can set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel in the finished crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Slowly add the flour mixture to the other mixture.. Adding flour gradually and mixing as you go helps blend it evenly and prevents lumps. Flour hydrates unevenly when dumped in at once, so lumps form that are hard to smooth out later.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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