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Dessert

Eggless Tea Cake

A moist, vanilla-flavored cake made with tea and no eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Eggless Tea 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

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the creamed sugar and butter.

  4. Stir in the cold tea and vanilla until well combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Serve warm.

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

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

  2. Tea + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 cake and, creamed with butter, helps give it a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Cold english breakfast tea
Supplies liquid to hydrate the flour and moisten the batter.

The step that matters

Stir in the cold tea and vanilla until well combined. Mixing only until combined keeps the batter tender, since overmixing flour develops gluten and makes the cake tough.

Swap the vanilla

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

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

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