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Dessert

Gold Cake

A sweet loaf made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, flour, baking powder, salt, cold water, and extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gold Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the sugar and butter until soft and frothy.

  2. Add the egg yolks and cream again until the mixture is very light.

  3. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together three times.

  4. Add 5 tablespoons of the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and beat for one minute.

  5. Add the remaining dry ingredients alternately with the cold water to the creamed mixture.

  6. Add the extract, beat hard for one minute, then bake in a greased and flour-dusted loaf pan.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and structure, helping the batter set firmly as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with the butter.

The step that matters

Add the extract, beat hard for one minute, then bake in a greased and flour-dusted loaf pan.. Beating after the flour is in develops gluten, which can make the cake tough if overdone. Beat for the stated time only, then get the batter into the pan and into the oven promptly, since the baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet.

“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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