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Dessert

Layer Cake

Layer Cake with hickory nuts made by baking a batter and filling layers with a thickened milk and nut mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Layer Cake

Why it works: Flour and nuts are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,180 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Layer 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 layers

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, egg yolks, egg white, water, flour, baking powder, and salt until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the nut filling

  1. In a steamer, heat the milk until hot.

  2. Dissolve cornstarch in a little cold milk and add to the hot milk.

  3. Stir in the eggs and sugar, then add chopped hickory nuts.

  4. Cook until the mixture thickens.

Assemble

  1. Spread the nut filling between the warm layers of 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. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 filling and add richness and structure as it cooks.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture so the nut filling sets spreadable.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise and become light.
Milk
Forms the base of the filling, adding moisture and creaminess.
Chopped hickory nuts
Add the main flavour and texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the nut filling until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a simmer and is stirred, and the eggs must be cooked through. Stopping early leaves a runny filling that will soak into the cake layers instead of holding between them.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour, milk):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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