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Dessert

Cream Cake

A cake made with sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, corn starch, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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 oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 3 eggs, 2 tablespoons cold water, 1 cup flour, and 1 teaspoon baking powder until smooth.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 pint milk to a boil.

  2. Add a scant 1 cup sugar and 10 beaten eggs to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in 2 tablespoons corn starch and cook until nearly done.

  4. Remove from heat and add ½ cup butter, stirring until melted.

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
Bind and set the custard, and add structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides structure as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so it rises and becomes light.
Milk
Provides the liquid that gives the custard its body and moisture.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk mixture so it holds together as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the corn starch into the milk. Starch granules swell and thicken only when heated. Stirring while it cooks prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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