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 ↓
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 the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the egg yolks and mix well.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
In another bowl, mix the baking soda and cream of tartar with the flour.
Combine the flour mixture with the creamed mixture, then fold in the egg whites.
Flavor with lemon extract.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.
Bake until golden, being careful not to slam the oven door.
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 + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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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Flour + eggtop 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
- Eggs
- Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air, and the yolks add richness and structure to the cake.
- Flour
- Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb once it bakes and sets.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the creamed base.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Provides acidity that activates the baking soda and helps stabilize the egg whites.
The step that matters
Fold in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so the cake rises less and turns out denser.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, egg, cream):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, cream. 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.
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