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Dessert

Cream Cake, French

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Cake, French

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar thoroughly.

  3. Add cold water, then sift in flour and baking powder while stirring in one direction.

  4. Bake in two thin cakes. Split them while hot.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, mix corn starch with milk, beaten egg, and sugar.

  2. Cook in a double boiler until thick.

  3. While hot, stir in butter and flavoring.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cream between the layers of cake.

  2. Sprinkle the top with powdered sugar.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 lift and a light crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the thin cakes rise.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and egg mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked cream.

The step that matters

Cook the cream in a double boiler until thick. Cornstarch thickens only when heated enough to swell its granules, and gentle indirect heat in a double boiler keeps the egg from scrambling or scorching before the cream sets.

“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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