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Dessert

Pinafore Cake

A butter, sugar, flour, milk, corn starch, cream of tartar, baking soda, and egg cake baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pinafore 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).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form in a separate bowl.

  5. Fold the egg whites into the butter mixture.

  6. Sift together the flour, corn starch, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  7. Gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into baking sheets and bake for 20 minutes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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.
Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and structure, while the yolks add richness and help set the crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb while creaming with the butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the batter rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, activating the baking soda and stabilizing the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the butter mixture. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or deflating the batter loses that trapped air, which reduces lift and leaves a denser cake.

“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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