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Dessert

Whipped Cream Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, and whipped cream topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Whipped Cream Cake

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 ↓

Whipped 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, stir together the sugar and soft butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk and flavoring.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  6. Mix the cream of tartar and baking soda into the flour, then sift it into the batter and stir lightly.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a small dripping pan and bake until golden.

  2. Once the cake is cool, whip the sweet cream until stiff and spread it over the cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping the batter bake tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and carrying flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Sweet cream
Whipped into a topping, adding richness and a soft, light finish.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whipped and folded gently. Stirring hard deflates the foam, so the cake bakes flatter and denser.

“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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