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Dessert

Six-egg White Angel Food

A light, airy cake made from six egg whites, sugar, flour, baking powder, 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 ↓

Six-egg White Angel Food

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 the batter

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

  2. In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until soft peaks form.

  3. Add the cream of tartar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  4. Gradually add the granulated sugar, beating until glossy.

  5. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gently fold into the egg mixture.

  6. Add the extract and fold until just combined.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into an ungreased angel food cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the cake is golden and springs back when touched.

  3. Invert the pan to cool completely before removing the cake.

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 that gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so they hold stiff peaks longer.
Granulated sugar
Dissolves into the foam, making it glossy and more stable.
Flour
Provides enough structure to set the cake once it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding the flour into the egg mixture. Overmixing deflates the whipped egg white foam, so the cake loses its airy rise and becomes dense. Fold gently, just until 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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