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Dessert

Velvet Cake

A simple cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, water, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flavor extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Velvet 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 and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Sift the cream of tartar into the flour and mix thoroughly.

  4. Sift the flour mixture into the batter and add the remaining cold water.

  5. Beat the eggs separately, then combine them with the batter.

  6. Stir in the flavor extract and mix well for 1-2 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 1 hour.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help bind the batter as it sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, tender crumb when creamed.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in a little water before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed so it reacts with the acid throughout the batter; undissolved clumps can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

“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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