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Dessert

Mrs. Sanford Duncan's Angel Cake

A light, airy cake made from beaten egg whites, sugar, flour, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Mrs. Sanford Duncan's Angel 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift the flour five times before measuring.

  3. Ensure the mixing bowl is perfectly dry before beating the egg whites.

  4. Use cold, fresh eggs and add a pinch of salt to the egg whites.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until creamy, then add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff.

  2. Gently stir in the sugar, then fold in the sifted flour carefully.

  3. Pour the batter into an ungreased angel food cake pan.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until golden.

  2. Once baked, cool the cake in the pan inverted.

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

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Egg whites whipped to foam provide the airy structure that lifts the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and stabilises the whipped egg white foam as it is stirred in.
All-purpose flour
Provides the light starch structure that holds the cake's airy crumb once baked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping them whip to a stiffer, more stable foam.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour carefully. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg white foam; vigorous stirring deflates it, leaving a dense, squat cake.

“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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