Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Sweet Cream Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the batter
Break the eggs into a cup and fill the cup with sweet cream.
In a mixing bowl, combine the eggs and cream with sugar, flour, baking powder, and flavoring.
Beat the mixture until smooth, similar to pancake batter.
Bake
Pour into a prepared cake pan and bake.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Add structure and binding, helping the batter set around the air and leavening as it bakes.
- Sweet cream
- Adds moisture and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown and the crumb stay moist.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
The step that matters
Beat until just smooth. Vigorous or prolonged beating develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense. Baking powder also starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, so the batter should go into the pan and oven promptly to keep its lift.
“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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