Skip to main content
Dessert

White Cake

A light white cake flavored with lemon, sweetened with sugar, enriched with raisins, walnuts, and boiled frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
White 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 ↓

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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk and egg whites, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the baking powder and flavoring.

  5. Pour the batter into a loaf pan or divide into three layers.

  6. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, chop the raisins, lemon, and walnuts together.

  2. Add enough boiled frosting to the mixture to spread easily.

  3. Spread the filling between the layers and frost the outside of the cake.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moist.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the batter can mix and bake evenly.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking powder gives its lift early, and the cake sets as the proteins firm. Pulling it too soon can leave the center wet and sunken, while overbaking dries the crumb.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg, raisin, lemon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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

“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.

More white cake recipes

Egg 9Icing 8Plain 6Warsaw 5Almond 3Coconut 3 See all 331 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes