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Dessert

Cream Cake

A simple cake with a whipped cream filling and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and nuts work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 638 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cream Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy.

  3. Add 1 cup of powdered sugar and mix well.

  4. Stir in ½ cup of boiling water, then add 1 cup of flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

  5. Flavor the batter with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

  6. Pour the batter into two layer cake pans and bake until golden.

Fill and finish

  1. For the filling, whip 1 pint of heavy cream until stiff.

  2. Add ½ cup of powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract to the whipped cream.

  3. Spread half of the whipped cream between the layers and the rest on top.

  4. If desired, sprinkle ½ cup of chopped nuts on top.

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. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Heavy cream
Whipped until stiff, it adds moisture and a rich, creamy filling and topping.

The step that matters

Whipping the heavy cream until stiff. Overwhipping cream past stiff peaks turns it grainy and can cause it to separate into butter. Stopping at stiff peaks keeps the filling smooth and spreadable.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, vanilla, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, vanilla, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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