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Dessert

Madeira Cake, Medium

A light, buttery cake made with flour, sugar, butter, lard, eggs, milk, baking powder, and optional ginger or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Madeira Cake, Medium

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat the eggs and milk together, then add to the creamed mixture and mix well.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then stir into the mixture until combined.

  4. If desired, add a pinch of ground ginger or essence of lemon for flavor.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake tin and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden and a skewer comes out clean.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, fine texture and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with fat, helps create a light, airy crumb.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating until light and fluffy traps air in the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives it a tender crumb. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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