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Dessert

Cream Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and milk, topped with coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. The book gives no cooking times either; 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 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Mix in the cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and flour until smooth.

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

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine boiling milk, sugar, egg, and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Stir until thickened, then let cool and flavor to taste.

Frost and serve

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the frosting on the cooled cake and top with coconut.

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. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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
Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, fluffy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg foam and helps the cake keep its airy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes and thickens the filling.
Boiling milk
Hydrates the flour and thickens with the egg to form a soft, creamy filling.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whipped egg whites to sweeten and stabilize the frosting.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to firm peaks without any trace of yolk or grease, because fat prevents the foam from holding air. Adding powdered sugar gradually keeps the foam stable and glossy.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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