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Dessert

Rose Cream Cake

A cake made with egg whites, sugar, flour, butter, sweet milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, granulated sugar, rich sweet cream, and rose coloring.

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

Rose 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 cake

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In a bowl, mix the sugar, flour, butter, sweet milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the granulated sugar and sweet cream together for 15 minutes until it reaches a gummy consistency.

  2. Remove from heat and add rose coloring to taste.

  3. Beat in the stiff egg whites into the syrup until well combined.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas for rising and a lighter crumb.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar and cream for the filling. Sugar syrup set by boiling thickens as it cools, and the record gives only a time, so overcooking can make it hard and underheating can leave it runny. Watch the consistency rather than the clock.

“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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