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Dessert

Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet filling made from sugar, egg, flour, and milk, flavored with vanilla or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

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. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the milk.

  6. Divide the batter into two layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, beat together the sugar, egg, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Heat the milk in a double boiler until scalding hot, then stir in the egg mixture.

  3. Cook until thickened, then flavor with vanilla or lemon.

Assemble

  1. Let the filling cool, then spread it between the cooled cake layers.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped structure and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and creaming with sugar traps air for lightness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and filling together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. The egg and flour mixture must be cooked in the hot milk until thickened, because the starch and egg proteins set the custard; undercooking leaves it runny, while overheating can curdle the eggs.

“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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