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Dessert

Indian Cake

A simple cake made with meal, flour, egg, and sweet milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Indian Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the meal, flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  2. Add the egg and enough sweet milk to create a thin batter. Mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake 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.

  1. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Meal
Forms the bulk of the cake and gives it its coarse, hearty texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidic powder that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Alkaline leavener that releases gas with the acid to lighten the batter.
Flour
Adds structure and helps hold the batter together while baking.

The step that matters

Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar evenly into the dry ingredients. Leavening works only where the acid and alkali meet. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of sour or bitter flavor and patchy rising, so the cake can be dense in places.

“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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