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Dessert

Cake Raised with Powders

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, cream of tartar, baking soda, and warm water, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cake Raised with Powders

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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and egg yolks until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the flour and mix thoroughly.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  5. (Optional) Omit the eggs and instead mix 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar into the flour.

Bake

  1. Just before baking, mix 1 teaspoon of baking soda into 1 cup of warm water and add to the batter.

  2. Pour the batter into two loaf pans and bake immediately.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Eggs
Egg whites beaten to stiff peaks add air and lift to the batter, giving a lighter crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing tenderness and flavor to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to release gas for rising.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce carbon dioxide, which makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda solution and baking immediately. Baking soda reacts with the acid as soon as it is wet, releasing gas. If the batter waits before baking, much of that gas escapes and the cake rises less well.

“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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