The original 1:1:1:1 formula — a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, metricated. The best-scaling cake ever devised.
Butter / oil cake 9×5 in loaf · 165 °C / 325 °F · 60–70 min · one 9×5 loaf
Conversion honesty: Converts reliably between roughly 0.5× and 2×. Beyond that, leavening stops scaling cleanly.
Ingredients grams first, cups for reference
Butter, softened225 g (≈ 1 cup)
Granulated sugar225 g (≈ 1 ¼ cups)
Eggs (large)4 large eggs (≈ 200 g)
All-purpose flour225 g (≈ 2 cups)
Vanilla extract4 g (≈ 1 tsp)
Salt3 g (≈ ½ tsp)
Method
Cream the butter and sugar for a full 5 minutes — there is no leavening; the air you beat in now is the entire rise.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each.
Fold in the flour and salt gently, then the vanilla.
Bake 60–70 minutes, tenting with foil if the crust darkens early.
Done when a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin 15 minutes.
Worth knowing: Equal weights of four ingredients: the pound cake is the poster child for scaling — change the pan, keep the ratio, and it simply works.
The traditional pound formula from the public-domain era, metricated.
Refit this recipe to your pan
Pick the pan you actually own — every gram, egg and minute above recalculates.