Pound cake over time
389 of the 462 recipes carry a publication date, from 2003 to 2026. Below: how many pages each year, whether the typical cake changed between the oldest and newest, and the oldest and newest pages themselves.
A date here is the one the page gives for itself: when it was published, or last updated. Sites often refresh an old recipe and its date together, so read these as when the pages went up, not when the recipes were created.
Recipes per year
Dated pages by the year they give. The first bar gathers the 8 pages from before 2007. Shading marks the periods compared below.
How the typical cake changed
No ingredient shows a clear change between pound cake pages dated before 2016 and those dated 2024 or later. The medians move a little from period to period, but by no more than chance would with this many recipes.
| Per 100 g flour | Before 201688 recipes | 2016 to 201996 recipes | 2020 to 202399 recipes | 2024 and later106 recipes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ButterNo clear change | 91% | 91% | 91% | 91% |
| SugarNo clear change | 110% | 120% | 132% | 107% |
| EggNo clear change | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% |
| DairyNo clear change | 7.7% | 51% | 53% | 47% |
| LeaveningNo clear change | 1.9% | 1.7% | 1.2% | 1.9% |
| SaltNo clear change | 0.4% | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.8% |
Each cell is the median baker's percentage in that period: grams of the ingredient per 100 g of flour. Higher and lower compare the newest period with the oldest, only where the change is clear (see how below). Periods are cut at year boundaries so each holds about the same number of recipes.
Oldest and newest pages
Oldest dates
Mar 20, 2003
Apricot Brandy Pound Cake · bettycrocker.comJan 1, 2004
Pâte travaillée: quatre-quarts aux pommes · bettybossi.chJan 1, 2004
Rührteig: Gleichschwer-Cake mit Äpfeln · bettybossi.chJan 16, 2004
Quatre-quarts aux abricots : la meilleure recette · marmiton.orgAug 13, 2004
Lemon-Zucchini Pound Cake · bettycrocker.com
Newest dates
Sep 18, 2026
Quatre-Quarts sans sucre pour diabétiques · chefsimon.comAug 28, 2026
Peach Cobbler Pound Cake · africanbites.comAug 3, 2026
Birthday Pound Cake · iambaker.netMay 14, 2026
Strawberry Pound Cake · delish.comMay 2, 2026
Strawberry Lemon Pound Cake · biggerbolderbaking.com
How the dates are read
Each date is the publication date in the recipe page's own structured data. 42 of the 462 recipes have none, or one without a year (such as “December 3”), and are left out.
31 more carry a date their site gave to many pages at once, which marks a site move or redesign rather than a publication: 2018-01-01 on tasteofhome.com (222 pages across Recipe Lab, 11 of them here), 2006-10-23 on marmiton.org (74 pages across Recipe Lab, 7 of them here) and 2016-12-11 on foodnetwork.com (6 pages across Recipe Lab, 2 of them here), and 9 more like it. They are left out too.
A change counts as clear when the newest period's median differs from the oldest period's by at least a tenth and a rank test puts the gap at 2.5 standard errors or more. For the share of recipes using an ingredient, the bar is 3 standard errors and 8 percentage points. Every ingredient is tested, so a lower bar would flag chance differences on most pages.
2026 is still in progress, so its bar is short for a reason that has nothing to do with baking.