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Dessert

Extra Nice Dessert Dish

A layered cake made with a batter, custard, whipped cream, and strawberry ice cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Extra Nice Dessert Dish

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat 3 eggs and mix in 1 cup white sugar until well combined.

  3. Add 1 cup flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 3 tablespoons boiling water; mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into round tins and bake until golden, about 25-30 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, heat 1 quart milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk 2 large eggs and 3 tablespoons sugar; slowly add the hot milk while stirring.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook until it thickens, then let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Whip ½ pint thick cream until stiff, sweeten to taste, and spread over the cooled cake.

  2. For the strawberry ice cream, mix 1 pint strawberry juice with 1 pint sugar, then stir in 1 quart cream.

  3. Chill the mixture until firm, then serve.

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

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

  2. Milk + strawberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

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

  3. Cream + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 when heated.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard, which thickens as the egg proteins set.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a stiff whipped topping for the cooled cake.
Strawberry juice
Supplies the strawberry flavour and liquid for the ice cream mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Egg proteins set with gentle heat, but overheating or boiling can scramble them into lumps. Stirring steadily and removing the pan once thick keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, milk, cream. 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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