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Dessert

Angel Food Loaf Cake

A light, airy cake made from beaten egg whites, sugar, flour, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Angel Food Loaf 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

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

  2. Place egg whites and salt in a large bowl.

  3. Beat until frothy.

  4. Add cream of tartar.

  5. Beat until stiff peaks form.

Make the batter

  1. Fold in sugar, sifting it in gradually. Fold gently.

  2. Add extract.

  3. Fold in sifted flour and baking powder carefully.

  4. Pour batter into an ungreased tube cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven. Cover the cake for the first two-thirds of the baking time.

  2. Remove the cover to finish baking.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they form the airy structure that lifts the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and stabilizes the whipped whites as it is folded in.
Flour
Provides the light structure that sets around the air bubbles as the cake bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping them whip to a stable, stiff foam.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, adding extra lift to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold gently after adding the sugar and flour. Heavy stirring deflates the whipped egg white foam, which is the only source of lift in this cake. Gentle folding keeps the air bubbles intact so the cake rises tall and stays light.

“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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