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Dessert

White Cake

A light, airy cake made with powdered sugar, flour, butter, egg whites, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

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

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 ↓

White 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gradually add the egg whites to the creamed mixture.

  4. Sift the flour with baking soda and cream of tartar, then fold it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a fine, tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's light crumb together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts and structures the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
An acid that stabilizes the whipped whites and reacts with baking soda to aid rising.

The step that matters

Fold the flour into the batter gently. Fold only until no dry streaks remain. Overmixing develops gluten and knocks out the air in the whipped whites, which leaves the cake tough and dense.

“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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