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Dessert

Cake Pudding

A baked dessert made from eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flavoring.

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

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 ↓

Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs with sugar, butter, and milk until well combined.

  2. Sift the baking soda into the flour.

  3. Gradually stir the baking soda into the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the cream of tartar.

  5. Stir the dissolved cream of tartar into the mixture just before baking.

  6. Add flavoring to taste.

  7. Mix the batter well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its starches set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the dissolved cream of tartar into the mixture just before baking. Baking soda and cream of tartar react as soon as they are combined and moistened, releasing gas. If the batter waits before baking, much of that lift is lost, so the batter should go into the oven promptly.

“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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