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Dessert

Ckeam Cake

A simple cake made with eggs, flour, sugar, baking powder, water, milk, corn starch, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Ckeam 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

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the 3 eggs.

  3. Mix in 1½ cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 3 tablespoons water until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans.

  5. Bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. Heat 1 pint milk in a saucepan for the cream.

  2. Whisk 1 egg, 1½ tablespoons corn starch, and 2 tablespoons sugar together in a separate bowl.

  3. Slowly add the egg mixture to the warm milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and flavor when cool.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 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 eggs add structure and help the cake batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream and adds richness and moisture.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a smooth, set texture.

The step that matters

Slowly add the egg mixture to the warm milk, stirring constantly. Adding the egg mixture slowly and stirring constantly keeps the eggs from scrambling. Gentle, constant stirring lets the cornstarch and egg thicken the milk evenly into a smooth cream.

“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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