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 ↓
Jelly-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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Beat the egg whites until frothy.
Make the batter
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Combine the creamed mixture with the milk and flour, then add the baking powder.
Divide the batter into 3 or 4 equal parts and pour into jelly pans.
Bake and assemble
Bake until done, then spread jelly between the layers and stack the cakes.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Egg whites
- Beaten egg whites add lift and structure to the batter.
- Butter
- Creamed with sugar, butter traps air and gives the cake a tender crumb.
- Sugar
- Creams with butter to aid aeration and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise.
The step that matters
Dividing the batter evenly. Unequal portions bake at different rates and produce layers of uneven thickness and doneness, making the stacked cake hard to assemble neatly. Equal parts help each layer bake evenly.
“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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