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Dessert

Receipt for French Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling made from eggs, milk, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Receipt for French 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Combine the sugar, cold water, flour, and baking powder.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg, corn starch, and a little milk.

  3. Add the mixture to the heated milk and stir until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Let the cream cool, then spread it between the 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Whites trapped by beating give the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream and provides its liquid body.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a spreadable set.

The step that matters

Add the mixture to the heated milk and stir until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when it reaches a boil and its granules swell in liquid. Stirring keeps heat even and prevents lumps or scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would leave the cream grainy.

“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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