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Dessert

Cream Cake

A simple cake made with boiled milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and lemon flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 3 eggs, 1½ cups flour, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and 2 tablespoons water or milk.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. In another bowl, beat together 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons flour, and 1 cup sugar. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk and mix well.

Combine and bake

  1. Combine both mixtures and flavor with lemon.

  2. Pour into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

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. 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so the baking soda reacts and helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter and custard.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the egg mixture to very hot milk can scramble the eggs if it is added too quickly. Stirring constantly while pouring helps the eggs thicken smoothly into the custard instead of setting in lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, cream, 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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