Name: Corn Starch Cake
Ingredients: ¾ pound butter; 1 pound fine white sugar; ½ cup sweet cream; 9 egg whites; 2 tablespoons corn starch; 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour; lemon flavoring

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Corn Starch Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream together the butter and sugar until frothy.
Add the sweet cream and beaten egg whites, mixing well.
Sift together the corn starch and flour, then fold into the mixture.
Add lemon flavoring to taste.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,927 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream, egg, corn, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.