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Dessert

Golden Cream Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, lemon, and a sweet cream filling, topped with yellow icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Golden 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 batter

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

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together for a few minutes.

  3. Add some of the milk and flour, reserving 1 cup of flour to sift with the cream of tartar.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites, then add the remaining flour and lemon extract.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and add it to the mixture.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine 1 cup of sugar, 3 egg yolks, and ½ cup of cream in a pan set in hot water.

  2. Moisten the cornstarch in the milk, then cook until thick.

  3. Add orange flavoring to taste, then mix in the yolks and sugar.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers and on top, then decorate with yellow icing.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped air gives the batter lift and an airy, light structure.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that raises the cake.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it thicken into a smooth, rich custard.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling when heated with the milk, giving it a stable body.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Cornstarch must be moistened in cold milk first so it does not clump, then heated so its starch granules swell and thicken. Egg yolks also set with heat, so overheating can make the filling grainy or curdled. Gentle heat over hot water helps prevent this.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, milk, cream, flour, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, milk, cream, flour, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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