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Dessert

Very Light Plain Cake

A simple, lightly flavored cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, flour, and lemon or vanilla extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Very Light Plain Cake

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 the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, butter, eggs, and cold water, then add the lemon or vanilla extract to taste.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder with the last cup of flour.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into pans lined with greased paper.

  2. Bake for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the pans.

  3. If the cake browns too quickly, cover it with paper.

  4. Test for doneness with a broom whisk.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Provide structure as they set, and add richness and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, softens the crumb, and helps the surface brown.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins and starch set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Cold water
Adds moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the batter. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Mixing until smooth is needed for an even batter, but overmixing develops too much gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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