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Dessert

Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling.

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.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, flour, baking powder, and water.

  3. Divide the batter between two pie tins and bake until golden.

  4. While the cake is hot, split it in half.

Make the cream filling

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk or cream.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of corn starch mixed in a little milk.

  3. Cook until thickened, then stir in 1 tablespoon of butter and flavor to taste.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cream filling between the layers of the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide structure and lift to the batter as they set when baked.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream filling.
Milk or cream
Makes the filling rich and creamy, adding moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Cook the cream until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred while cooking. Undercooked starch leaves the filling thin and runny, so it will not hold between the cake layers.

“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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