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Dessert

Belvidere Cream Cake

A butter and sugar cake topped with a sweet cream made from milk, flour, sugar, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Belvidere 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, and cream of tartar, and mix well.

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

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, mix the egg, flour, and sugar with part of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk and stir in the egg mixture until thickened.

  3. Add a pinch of salt and flavor as desired.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and thickens the cream.
Eggs
Add structure and binding as their proteins set when baked or heated.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that works with baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the hot milk. Stir steadily while adding the egg mixture to the hot milk. As it heats, the egg proteins set and the starch swells, which thickens the cream. Pouring too fast or letting it boil can curdle the eggs.

“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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