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Dessert

French Cream Cake

A layered cake with custard filling and white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Cream 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the flour, baking powder, and cold water, then mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a small tin.

  5. Bake until golden.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, boil the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the cornstarch with ½ cup milk until smooth.

  3. Once the milk boils, stir in 1 cup sugar and the cornstarch mixture slowly.

  4. Add the beaten eggs and ½ cup butter, then stir until dissolved.

Assemble and finish

  1. Split the cake while warm to fill with custard.

  2. Fill the split cake with custard.

  3. Top with white icing.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and enrich the custard, helping it set and giving structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard so it holds its shape when filled into the cake.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and custard and helps tenderize the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk slowly. Adding the cornstarch slurry slowly while the milk is boiling and stirring constantly prevents lumps and lets the starch disperse evenly, so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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