Skip to main content
Dessert

Centennial Cake

A cake made from eggs, sugar, flour, butter, and optional raisins, topped with a whipped egg‑white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Centennial 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat the 4 eggs until very light.

  3. Add 1½ cups of sugar and beat for 2 minutes.

  4. Sift 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar into 1 cup of flour and beat for 2 minutes.

  5. Add ½ cup of cold water and beat for 2 minutes.

  6. Add another cup of flour with ½ teaspoon of baking soda sifted through and beat for 2 minutes.

  7. Finally, add ⅓ cup of melted butter and beat well together.

Bake and frost

  1. Bake in two thin sheets.

  2. For the frosting, beat the reserved 2 egg whites to a stiff froth.

  3. Gradually add powdered sugar until firm enough to hold a knife mark.

  4. Add a pinch of cream of tartar to make it tender.

  5. Spread the frosting over the cake while it's still warm.

  6. Return the cake to the oven to set the frosting.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Whipped to a light foam that gives the cake its structure and lift.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's airy crumb together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold moisture in the crumb.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites and keeps the batter light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the frosting. Whites must be beaten to a stiff, stable foam; under-beaten or greasy whites will not hold their shape, and the frosting will slump or stay soft when spread.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes