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Dessert

Cream Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

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, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, and lemon extract; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, heat the milk to boiling.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix corn starch with a little cold milk.

  3. Gradually add this mixture to the beaten egg and sugar.

  4. Return the mixture to the boiling milk and stir constantly until thick.

  5. Let the custard cool before spreading it between the cake 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 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 add structure and richness to the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard filling as it heats with the milk.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, golden crumb.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard filling. Corn starch thickens only when the mixture is heated to boiling while stirred constantly. Stopping early leaves the filling thin, and stirring unevenly can scorch or lump it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, corn, vanilla. 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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