Skip to main content
Dessert

Delicate Cake

A light cake made with sugar, butter, egg whites, milk, flour, baking powder, and flavoring extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Delicate Cake

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 ↓

Delicate 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 sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a flat tin and bake until golden.

  2. Frost the cake and place half a walnut on each square.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 whites trap air, giving the cake lightness and structure as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and become tender.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to hold air, adding richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to help build a light texture and add sweetness and browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold trapped air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them vigorously knocks out that air and leaves a dense cake, so they should be folded in gently with a light motion.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes