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Dessert

Feather Cake Pudding

A sweet cake pudding made with sugar, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, vanilla or lemon extract, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Feather Cake Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the well-beaten yolk of the egg.

  3. Mix in the flour and milk alternately.

  4. Stir in the melted butter and flavoring.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white until light.

  6. Sift in the baking powder.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven and serve with a hot 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 batter and, creamed with butter, helps give a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Egg
The beaten white adds air and lift, while the yolk adds richness and binds the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white until light. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg white. Overmixing deflates the batter, so the cake rises less and turns dense.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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