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Dessert

Newport Cake

A light, airy cake made with butter, flour, eggs, powdered sugar, brandy, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Newport Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually beat in the sifted flour mixed with baking powder.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add the powdered sugar and mix well.

  5. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  6. Fold the egg whites into the batter gently.

  7. Add the brandy and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 and carries fat that gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while adding moisture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the cake's texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in roughly or vigorously knocks out air and leads to a dense, flat cake, so fold gently and keep the batter airy.

“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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