Pound Cake Lab
The pound of each: how far butter, sugar and eggs drift from flour's weight.
462 recipes from 111 sites, each reduced to grams and written as baker's percentages: grams of each ingredient per 100 g of flour, so a small recipe and a double batch line up. Below: the typical cake, how far recipes stray from it, and a page for every recipe with a link to the original.
Recipes
462
from 111 sites
Typical flour
380 g
about 3 cups
Oven
350°F
175°C · median of 411
Bake time
60 min
most 45 to 68 min
The median of all 462 recipes for each ingredient, scaled to 380 g of flour. No single recipe is exactly this: each line is the middle of its own distribution. “Most recipes” means the middle half, from the 25th to the 75th percentile.
| Ingredient | Grams |
|---|---|
| FlourThe scale for everything else | 380 gabout 3 cups |
| ButterMost recipes use 280 to 380 g | 345 gabout 1 1/2 cups |
| SugarMost recipes use 380 to 610 g | 455 gabout 2 1/4 cups |
| EggMost recipes use 255 to 365 g | 305 gabout 6 large eggs |
| Dairy32% use none; the rest mostly 170 to 285 g | 175 gabout 3/4 cup |
| LeaveningMost recipes use 1.5 to 11 g | 6 g |
| SaltMost recipes use 0.5 to 5 g | 2.5 g |
Bake350°F (175°C) for about 60 minutes.
Volumes are approximate: flour at 125 g a cup, sugar 200 g, butter or oil 225 g, milk and other liquids 240 g, a large egg 50 g.
Each dot is a recipe, placed by grams of the ingredient per 100 g of flour (100% would be as much as the flour). The shaded band is the middle half of recipes and the line is the median.
median 91% · most 74 to 100%
The original recipe was a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour: 100% here. Most modern recipes use less.
range 45 to 150%
median 120% · most 100 to 160%
Sugar creamed into the butter is most of the rise in a cake with little or no leavening.
range 60 to 250%
median 80% · most 67 to 96%
Eggs set the fine, dense crumb; the classic ratio matches the flour's weight.
range 40 to 146%
median 46% · 32% use none
Sour cream, cream cheese or milk: not in the original, now in most recipes, for a moister cake.
range 0 to 120% · those that use some, mostly 45 to 75%
median 1.6% · most 0.4 to 2.8%
Traditional pound cake uses none; a little baking powder is common insurance.
range 0 to 6.7% · 23% use none
median 0.7% · most 0.1 to 1.3%
Salt balances the butter and sugar.
range 0 to 2.6% · 24% use none
Measured by how far apart the 25th and 75th percentile recipes are. The widest gaps are where the choice of recipe matters most.
Recipes agree most on butter and egg: butter 74 to 100%, egg 67 to 96% for the middle half.
452 of the recipes come in 4 languages with enough of each to compare: English 363, French 67, German 14, Italian 8.
English recipes whose titles use a word, against the ones that do not. What recipe writers do when they pick the word, not proof that it makes the texture.
Recipes with “orange” in the title: less butter (61% vs 91%); more leavening (2.5% vs 1.3%); less sugar (107% vs 133%).
“orange” (15)the rest (348)middle half of all
Butterrecipes with orange in the title 61% vs the rest 91%
Leaveningrecipes with orange in the title 2.5% vs the rest 1.3%
Sugarrecipes with orange in the title 107% vs the rest 133%
Recipes with “chocolate” in the title: more dairy (78% vs 58%).
“chocolate” (19)the rest (344)middle half of all
Dairyrecipes with chocolate in the title 78% vs the rest 58%
74 pound cake recipes have 50 or more reader ratings. A rating count says how many people rated a page, which follows its traffic more than its quality. Against the other 388, medians per 100 g of flour, compared within each language:
On no ingredient do the most-reviewed recipes differ from the rest by more than chance would explain.
50+ ratings (74)the rest (388)middle half of all
Butterthe most-reviewed recipes 94% vs the rest 91%
Sugarthe most-reviewed recipes 126% vs the rest 117%
Eggthe most-reviewed recipes 80% vs the rest 80%
Dairythe most-reviewed recipes 51% vs the rest 44%
Leaveningthe most-reviewed recipes 1.4% vs the rest 1.7%
Saltthe most-reviewed recipes 0.7% vs the rest 0.7%
411 of 462 recipes state an oven temperature, and 54% of those bake at 350°F (175°C). The middle half bake at 325 to 350°F. The other 51 do not say.
449 recipes state a bake time. Taking the middle of any stated range (“55 to 65 minutes” counts as 60), the median is 60 minutes and the middle half bake 45 to 68 minutes.
The single most common pairing is 350°F for 60 to 70 minutes, with 74 of the 406 recipes that state both.
Nearest the median on every ingredient at once.
In 7 languages: English 363, French 67, German 14, Italian 8, Spanish 6, Dutch 2, Portuguese 2. Lines in other languages are read in their own units and words, and each recipe page links to the original. 111 sites in all. No site contributes more than 12 recipes.
Every ingredient line is converted to grams and grouped (butter and oil count as fat; white, brown and liquid sweeteners as sugar), then divided by the flour weight. That baker's percentage is the only comparison that holds across recipes of different sizes.
97% of the 4,304 ingredient lines got a weight. 28% of those weights were printed by the source; the rest were converted from cups and spoons with standard densities, so treat single recipes as close, not exact. Frosting, glaze, streusel and other toppings are listed on each recipe page but left out of the percentages.
A recipe outside the plausible range for any ingredient is left out rather than allowed to stretch every chart; it is usually a different dish with the same name or a misread line. Of the pages fetched, 229 were left out: 104 outside the plausible range on some ingredient (butter 53, dairy 16, sugar 14, egg 11, leavening 7, salt 3), 39 over the 12-per-site cap, 35 with no flour, or none that could be weighed, 25 with a title that names a different dish, 16 made from a boxed mix, 7 duplicates of other pages, 2 too many lines without an amount, and 1 a listing page, not a recipe page.
Every recipe page links to the original, which is where the method is. Recipe Lab does not republish instructions or photos.