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Dessert

French Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling made from milk, cornstarch, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

French 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. Beat together 1 cup of sugar and 3 eggs until very light.

  3. Sift together 1¾ cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder several times.

  4. Gradually mix the flour into the egg mixture.

  5. Add 4 tablespoons of boiling water.

  6. Pour the batter into two cake pans.

  7. Bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, heat 1 pint of milk until nearly boiling.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  3. Add to the hot milk.

  4. Beat 2 eggs with 1 cup of sugar.

  5. Combine with the milk mixture.

  6. Stir constantly while cooking until it thickens enough to drop from a spoon.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Stir in ½ cup of melted butter and your choice of flavoring.

Assemble

  1. Once the cakes are cool, split them with a sharp knife.

  2. Spread the cream between the layers.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Sugar + flourtop 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 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 structure and a light crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its main structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream, which is thickened by cooking with cornstarch and egg.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a spreadable body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished cream.

The step that matters

Stir the cream constantly while it cooks. Egg and cornstarch thicken the cream, but the egg can scramble and lumps can form if the mixture sits still over heat. Constant stirring keeps it smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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