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White Perfection Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with sugar, butter, milk, cornstarch, egg whites, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Perfection Cake

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 ↓

White Perfection Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in the milk and add it to the creamed mixture.

  3. Stir in the baking powder.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Add flavoring as desired.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg whites
Whipped air bubbles give the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb while creaming with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb and gives a fine, delicate texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the starch and flour-free batter.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. The egg whites hold trapped air that makes the cake light. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out and produces a dense cake, so fold with a broad, gentle motion until just combined.

“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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