Name: Pinafore Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup butter; 1½ cups sugar; ½ cup milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 4 eggs, beaten; ½ cup corn starch; 1½ cups flour; 2 tablespoons cream of tartar

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 ↓

Pinafore 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.

Make the batter

Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.
Add the sugar and mix until well combined.
Stir in the milk and baking soda.
Add the beaten eggs, corn starch, and flour, mixing until smooth.
Fold in the cream of tartar.

Bake

Pour the batter into baking sheets.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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.

Butter + milktop 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).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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

Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the cake feel tender and moist.
Eggs: Add structure and binding, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour: Provides the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking soda: Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar: Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda, adding lift and stabilizing 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.