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Dessert

Cheap Cream Cake

A simple layered cake with a sweet milk filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cheap 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk and egg, then mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  5. Flavor to your taste.

  6. Pour into prepared cake pans.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Mix 1 egg, ½ cup sugar, and ½ cup flour with a little cold milk for the filling.

  3. Stir this mixture into 1 cup of boiling milk.

  4. Cook until thick.

  5. Flavor the filling to your taste.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between layers.

  2. Sprinkle the top with sugar.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as it bakes.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the crumb and a rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Flour and egg in the filling thicken only when the mixture is cooked and stirred enough for the starch to gelatinize and the egg to set. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny filling that can soak into the layers.

“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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