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Dessert

Belvidere Cream Cake

A butter and sugar cake topped with a sweet milk and flour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Belvidere 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. 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix until smooth.

  6. Beat in the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, scald 1 cup of milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup of flour (or corn starch), ½ cup sugar, and 1 egg with a small amount of the hot milk.

  3. Stir this mixture back into the hot milk and cook until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and add a pinch of salt and ½ teaspoon extract for flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the cake crumb as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, working with baking soda to lift the cake and stabilise it.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, tender crumb when creamed.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake and thickens the cream.

The step that matters

Cook the cream until thickened. The starch in the flour or corn starch must be heated fully to swell and thicken the mixture. Stopping early leaves a thin, raw-tasting cream, while overcooking can cause scorching or lumps.

“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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