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Dessert

Plain Layer Cake

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, water, and extract, baked in layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Plain Layer Cake

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 ↓

Plain Layer Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until soft, then mix in the sugar until combined.

  2. If necessary, add 1-2 tablespoons of boiling water to achieve a soft and frothy mixture.

  3. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and cream again until very light.

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

  5. Take 5 tablespoons of the sifted dry ingredients and mix them into the creamed mixture.

  6. Add the remaining dry ingredients alternately with the cold water, beating hard for about 2 minutes.

  7. Add the extract and gently fold in the beaten egg whites without overmixing.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in layers in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  2. Set the layers together with your desired filling.

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 + 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a soft, tender structure and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Overmixing knocks air out of the whites and deflates the batter, so the layers rise less and bake up denser. Fold gently until just combined.

“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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