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Dessert

Cream Cake

A cake made with butter, eggs, flour, sugar, water, and a cream filling of milk, egg, sugar, cornstarch, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Cream Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

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

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the water.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 25-30 minutes.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, boil nearly ½ pint of milk.

  2. In a bowl, beat 1 egg with ½ cup sugar and 1 tablespoon cornstarch.

  3. When the milk is nearly boiling, stir in the egg mixture and cook until thickened.

  4. Add a small piece of butter and flavor to taste.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake is cool, split it in half and spread the cream between the 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. 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. Flour + milktop 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor in the cake and the cream.
Cream of tartar
Acidic, reacting with baking soda to help the cake rise and keep its texture light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream as its starch granules swell and gelatinize in hot milk.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream until thickened. The egg yolks and cornstarch thicken the milk only at the right heat. If the mixture gets too hot or boils too hard, the egg can scramble and turn grainy, so the cream must be cooked gently until it coats a spoon.

“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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