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Dessert

Lady Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, egg whites, bitter almond extract, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lady 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

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

  2. Line the baking tins with thin, greased paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the flour, mixing until well combined.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until fully incorporated.

  4. Flavor the mixture with a few drops of extract of bitter almond and rose-water.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared tins and bake until golden brown.

  2. Once cooled, ice the tops as desired.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give it a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it traps air that lifts the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Folded in, they trap air and help the cake rise and set light.
Extract of bitter almond
Contributes a strong, distinctive aroma to the batter.
Rose-water
Adds a floral aroma that flavors the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only if they are beaten and folded in gently. Stirring vigorously knocks out the air, leaving a dense cake that rises less in the oven.

“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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