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Dessert

Butternut Cake

A sweet cake made with butternut squash, sugar, flour, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butternut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 37 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Butternut 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and water, mixing until combined.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and butternuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Flour + butternuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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 separately and folded in to add lightness and structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Butternuts
Folded in as the main add-in, contributing texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the butternut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, cream, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits about as well
  4. Butternutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, cream, egg. 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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