Name: Whipped Cream Cakes
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; 3 cups flour; 1 cup milk; ½ cup butter; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; 1 teaspoon baking soda; stiff whipped cream (to taste); flavoring (to taste); sweetener (to taste)

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Whipped Cream Cakes

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the cake

In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, milk, butter, cream of tartar, and baking soda until smooth.
Pour the batter into a cake pan and bake until golden.

Fill and finish

Remove the center of the top of the cake and scoop out some of the cake.
Fill the hollow with whipped cream, flavored and sweetened to your taste.
Replace the top and frost the cake.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel in the crumb.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the batter so the baking soda reacts and helps the cake rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning as it bakes.
Milk: Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

“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.