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Dessert

Yankee Cake Pudding

A sweet cake pudding made with flour, milk, sugar, butter, egg, and flavoring, baked at 300°F.

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

Yankee Cake Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until very light.

  3. Add the flour and milk alternately, mixing well.

  4. Stir in lemon or vanilla extract to taste.

  5. Mix the cream of tartar and baking soda in 1 tablespoon of milk, then stir into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a baking dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve with a hot or cold sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, tender crumb when beaten with butter.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to produce lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream of tartar and baking soda. These are the leavening pair, and they must be mixed into the liquid first so they are evenly dispersed. Uneven distribution leaves dense or patchy spots and bitter pockets of soda, so the batter should be combined thoroughly before baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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