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Dessert

French Cream Cake

A layered cake with a custard filling made from eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, flour, cold water, and baking powder until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into pie pans for two cakes or jelly pans for four cakes.

  4. Bake until golden, then split the cakes while warm.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, boil the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the corn starch with a little sweet milk and add the well beaten eggs.

  3. Slowly stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Let it boil, then add the sugar and butter, stirring until dissolved.

  5. Flavor with vanilla and spread the hot custard between the split cakes.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 the batter and, in the custard, thicken the milk and add richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it sets into a spreadable filling.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and richness in the custard.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and custard and helps tenderize the crumb.

The step that matters

Slowly stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the egg mixture gradually and stirring constantly tempers it, so the eggs do not scramble and the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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